Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Are Doctors’ Duties when Following Patients’ Orders a Bitter Pill to Swallow?

Abstract

Approximately two years ago, in 1992, I was immersed in research for a master’s dissertation considering whether the time had come for a review of criminal justice policy regarding physicians who perform active euthanasia. My initial area of interest was the movement for decriminalization of euthanasia in the United States, where I had been a criminal lawyer. It was my intention to consider the Dutch experience, where, after ten years of de facto decriminalization, euthanasia was widely, and presumably safely, practised, and to contemplate the arguments for and against changing standards in some of the United States.