By: T. Brian Callister
Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal
As a practicing physician and medical school professor with more than 30 years of experience, I know firsthand that hospice and palliative care are wonderful and underutilized resources for the terminally and chronically ill. One should also note that refusing medical interventions and medications at the end of life is both a reasonable and ethical option at times.
On the other hand, physician-assisted suicide — which could be on the agenda during Nevada’s current legislative session and is now being referred to by the candy-coated label “medical-aid-in-dying” — is an ethically absurd and morally corrupt intervention. It is overt killing at its very core.
First and foremost, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) creates perverse incentives to prematurely kill, not to just “aid in dying.” It also turns the physician into a complicit partner in this outright killing.