Kathryn L. Tucker, the founder and director of the End of Life Liberty Project has concluded that physicians in North Carolina can provide assistance in dying (AID) to their mentally competent terminally ill patients who request it, subject to the prevailing standard of care, without risk of a viable criminal prosecution or medical practice disciplinary action.
Disability rights groups that oppose self-determination for people who seek physician-assisted dying (PAD ) argue that such people should not have the right to decide for themselves when their lives are no longer tenable. Nevertheless, the disability rights groups do make points related to PAD that are worth considering; for one, they have helped me realize that over the last ten years I have become disabled.
The American Association of Suicidology recognizes that the practice of physician aid in dying, also called physician assisted suicide, Death with Dignity, and medical aid in dying, is distinct from the behavior that has been traditionally and ordinarily described as “suicide,” the tragic event our organization works so hard to prevent. Although there may be overlap between the two categories, legal physician assisted deaths should not be considered to be cases of suicide and are therefore a matter outside the central focus of the AAS.
This National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine sponsored a workshop last week that was intended to explore the evidence base and research gaps relating to the implementation of the clinical practice of allowing terminally ill patients to access life-ending medications with the aid of a physician. The workshop examined what is known, and unknown, about how physician-assisted death is practiced and accessed in the United States; it was not to be a focus of the workshop to discuss at length the moral or ethical arguments for or against the practice of physician-assisted death. It was billed as a neutral space to facilitate dialogue in order to help inform ongoing discussions between patients, their providers, and other health care stakeholders. What follows is a report on that workshop.
