A Sane Alternative To The Pro-Death Spin & Lies

Here’s a very sane articulation of the difficulties around end of life issues that should be ore widely read. There are, indeed, other ways of managing the emd of life than assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Physician Assisted Suicide: A Spiritual Challenge

Last week’s piece on Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) [2]by Dr. Juliana Eng addresses in simple and clear terms an issue that, at times, occupies the front pages of our newspapers or becomes the center of heated public debate or the theme of elaborated ethical argumentations. For long periods, however, the request of some of our patients to be helped in putting an end to their suffering, be it physical or existential or both, goes on silently in the professional lives of many of us.

As Ethics Editor of Clinical Correlation, I would very much like to see Dr. Eng’s piece stir a debate in our community as members of New York University regarding PAS and its many medical, moral, psychological and social implications. In my opinion, to be useful, this debate should not be adversarial or focused on dogmatic reasoning. Rather, it should be a forum where each one of us feels at ease to express his or her views as a practicing physician who may have encountered patients requesting PAS, but also as a person who may have been personally touched by the extreme suffering of a relative or friend. more