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Professional Norms and Physician Attitudes Toward Euthanasia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Thomas A. Preston
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Extract

The chair of the ethics committee of a major medical center agonized over how he, as a physician, and his organization should deal with Initiative 119, which, if passed, would legalize physician involvement in active, voluntary euthanasia in Washington State. In the end, he said, he could not vote for aid-in-dying because, “However much I want to reduce suffering, I myself just couldn’t do it to one of my patients.” He spoke of a personal distaste for the potential act, of a profound desire not to have to do it. It was not an ethical argument, but an honest and compelling expression of feelings.

Why can’t this sincere man do it, even for patients who request such aid? In a 1991 poll, taken in Washington State prior to the vote on Initiative 119, 49 percent of the physicians surveyed supported the initiative, but 75 percent did not want to participate in aid-in-dying.

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Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 1994 , pp. 36 - 40
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1994

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