Is Physician-Assisted Suicide Ever Ethically Justified?

Ronald W. Pies, Mark S. Komrad, Anne Hanson and Cynthia Geppert are physician-ethicists who discuss physician-assisted suicide (euphemistically termed “Medical Aid in Dying” in Canada).  They argue several points, beginning with the term itself.  “The term medical aid in dying fundamentally means helping patients kill themselves…Indeed, the process typically described as MAID in no sense aids dying; on the contrary, it rapidly converts an ill individual into a dead one.  This is substantively different than the withdrawal of heroic but nonbeneficial or inappropriate measures, such as the use of ventilators that merely prolong the dying process in the final stages of a terminal illness.”

Read More:  Psychiatric Times