Assisted Death — A Compassionate Response to a Medical Failure

Abstract

I argue here that an adjudication of assisted death might follow from\nviewing it as a compassionate response to one sort of medical failure, rather\nthan as something to be prohibited outright or as something to be established\nas a standard policy. This would seem to translate, in law, into allowing\ncompassionate and competent medical practice to serve as a defense against a\ncharge of homicide or of assisting a suicide. By assisted death I mean either\nvoluntary, active euthanasia, as now commonly practiced in the Netherlands and\nas proposed in an unsuccessful referendum in Washington State in 1991, or\nassisted suicide, in which the patient is provided at his or her request with\nsufficient medication or other means to end life, with the knowledge that the\npatient intends to use the medication for that purpose.