Pain, Physician-assisted Suicide, and Euthanasia

Prepublication Release ofJournalArticles

“…Yet other clinicians remain unwilling to prescribe sufficient doses in part because they do not distinguish morally or psychologically between actions performed with the intent to cause death and those performed with the foreseen possibility of causing death. 7,19,20 Voluntary euthanasia, in which the physician administers a lethal injection at the request of a suffering patient, clearly violates the rule's requirement that death not be intentionally caused as a means or an end. 21 However, problems arise when the rule is used to argue against physician-assisted suicide.…”

Illness-Related Hopelessness in Advanced Cancer: Influence of Anxiety, Depression, and Preparatory Grief

“…Hopelessness is a key variable that links depression to suicidal ideation and suicide in patients with cancer (Bostwick & Pankratz, 2000;Foley, 1995;Papakostas et al, 2003).…”

Freud's Physician-Assisted Death

“…[17][18][19][20][21] The tendency to overuse medical technology at the end of life, when patients are too ill or sedated to protest or even to understand the implica-tions of treatment, is undeniable. 22 Callahan noted that contemporary medical decision making is at risk of becoming a closed loop, in which progress in biomedical research leads to a technological, not a moral imperative to extend life.…”