Out of the Closet on the Right to Die

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Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1994. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Out of the Closet on the Right to Die

American Medical News (12/12/94) Vol. 37, No. 46, P. 13
Morain, Claudia

Physicians are helping young, politically savvy AIDS patients in the push for assisted suicide. "I've always believed every person has the right to freedom of decisions about their own body, including the timing and mode of their own death," testified AIDS specialist Dr. Peter Shalit. Earlier this year, Shalit was a plaintiff in the Washington state case-- propelled by a woman with AIDS--that overturned the state's 140-year-old ban on assisted suicide. Similar cases are taking place around the country. Ralph Mero, executive director of Compassion in Dying, said that nearly half of the group's calls for aid-in-dying come from people with AIDS. "It is a captive population which has already been condemned to death," said Mero. "They want options." A survey in the New England Journal of Medicine of 938 doctors found that 53 percent thought assisted suicide should be legal, and 40 percent said that would be willing to participate in it--there was much less support for euthanasia, which many defined as active killing. Assisted suicide proponents contend that legalizing aid-in-dying would end the suffering caused by failed suicides and would better protect the patients by being open and regulated.

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