When I was in my 40s, I watched my mother and my father-in-law suffer agonizing deaths from cancer. I remember thinking, “That’s not the way I want to die.” As an internist, I have treated patients in the office and the hospital, including intensive care units. I took over the primary care of patients who were terminally ill when specialists were no longer able to help them. I passionately believed that my professional responsibilities included caring for my patients at the ends of their lives.

Read the counterpoint: Physician-assisted suicide won’t atone for medicine’s ‘original sin’

I was involved in most aspects of pain control and hospice care. For some patients, I provided palliative sedation to unconsciousness, which means giving intravenous morphine to someone who is terminally ill and has excruciating, uncontrolled pain, essentially putting them to sleep until death occurs. I have had discussions with patients about putting them on a ventilator and later disconnecting it to end prolonged dying processes. I helped patients decide whether or not to undergo treatment when the alternative was death. However, when a terminally ill patient with cancer asked me to help him die peacefully to end his suffering, I was afraid that I might lose my license or, worse still, end up in prison. I’m embarrassed to say that I declined to give him a lethal prescription, as I put my needs ahead of his. That is a morally compromised position.

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Image: By jenny downing – glass half-full, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8247267

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