This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Patrick Pullicino, MD, PhD
Department of Neurology Buffalo General Hospital 100 High St Buffalo, NY 14203

Arch Neurol. 1997;54(5):516.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Physician-assisted suicide goes against the traditional healing role of the physician and, as pointed out by Bernat,¹ is likely to undermine the patient-physician relationship. It is clear that physicians, as a group, are divided in their willingness to assist suicide: 375 (40%) of 938 physicians in Washington State were willing to assist a patient to commit suicide, but 366 (39%) of 938 held that assisted suicide is never ethically justified.² With the reports³ from the Netherlands that involuntary euthanasia has followed the legalization of voluntary euthanasia, concern will increase among patients as to what would happen to them if they became too ill to participate in end-of-life decisions. Physicians are unlikely to discuss their ethical views with patients, but patients will increasingly want to know their physicians' stand on euthanasia and assisted suicide.

One way to address this is for physicians to document their stand on euthanasia . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?