“If no one is encouraging those opposed to hastening their death, I don’t understand why there is so much antagonism from the medical, religious, and legal communities?” — Jim Van Buskirk
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A family practice physician explains why she changed her mind about Medical Aid in Dying.
“Opponents of Death-with-Dignity (DWD) laws use several falsehoods in their attempts to prevent legislation from passing. We believe policy decisions affecting people with terminal illness should be made based on evidence and the actual content of the legislation.”
“New legislation and court judgments are further expanding access to MAID, some bringing new and different twists.”
“There should be a JLMA form: Just Leave Me Alone, for those of us who concede that we’re actually going to die some day and work to keep our end-times as inexpensive and comfortable as possible.”
“Having a sense of the possibilities in advance is essential to minimize surprises, make specific requests for end-of-life symptom management, and decide the possible paths available to you.”
“Why would an anti-MAiD activist try to force a patient about whom they know nothing, to live by the activist’s personal values rather than the patient’s own?”
When determining an ethical standard of discussing physician aid in dying (PAD) during medical decision-making, it is important to begin with the caveat that physicians are not ethically obligated to assist a patient in ending his or her life, even if the physician informs the patient of the right to do so.
As more states legalize PAD and the practice becomes more ethically accepted, it is important to determine a standard of care to guide physicians.
It’s time that we revise and refine our cultural lexicon around this emergent end-of-life practice. A medically assisted death definitively warrants a linguistic and conceptual category of its own.
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