Assisted Suicide

(3)

Which brings us more or less naturally to the concept of 'assisted suicide.' It seems that the federal government is against suicide in general and assisted suicide in particular, and is testing the current Oregon law which allows doctors to prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminal patients. This is a very juicy subject.

On the one hand a physician is sworn to, 'First do no harm' and on the other hand to, 'alleviate suffering.' There seems to be an obvious conflict in the case of AS. But I think that the conflict is more apparent than real. There are obviously cases where not allowing a patient to end his or her life would be tandamount to inflicting torture, which would clearly be harmful to the patient. In other words a physician who allowed a terminal patient to suffer 'interminal' pain would be guilty of 'doing harm.'

So I tend to agree with the Oregon law.