Diocesan Resources
Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Wrong Approach to End of Life Care by Dr. F. Michael Gloth (2003)
Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Wrong Approach to End of Life Care by F. Michael Gloth, III, M.D.
The nation’s largest and most influential medical organizations, the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians, as well as many smaller physicians’ groups, are on record as opposing physician-assisted suicide. Yet, despite the strong and widespread opposition of the medical community, last year physicians in Oregon wrote prescriptions to help 38 of their patients kill themselves. The 38 deaths represent a disturbing reversal in the decline in physician-assisted suicides in the prior year: from 27 in 2000 to 21 in 2001. Why has Oregon accepted a practice strongly opposed by organized medicine?
The answer is in large part due to clever media campaigns waged by advocates of physician-assisted suicide, and the willingness of these groups to distort medical facts and disseminate myths with the help of an uninformed or biased media. Advocates of physician-assisted suicide try to obscure its real nature by avoiding references to euthanasia, suicide, and homicide. Yet, the arguments supporting physician-assisted suicide apply equally to suicide without a physician’s assistance, as well as to euthanasia and homicide. Adding the term “physician-assisted” makes it no less suicide, and no less murder — although admittedly it sounds more benign.
The confusion engendered by the lack of clear and accurate media reporting is not the only reason, of course. Many today measure the value of life in strictly utilitarian terms. Seeing diminished value in lives that are no longer robust, they conclude that physician-assisted suicide is a rational choice. This article provides information on physician-assisted suicide drawn from clinical and public policy experience. It will be shown that as a matter of morality, medicine and public policy, physician-assisted suicide is the wrong approach to end of life care.