What Does “Medicine after the Holocaust” Have to Do with Aid in Dying?

Abstract

What place does a chapter discussing aid in dying, the choice made by a mentally competent, terminally ill patient to self-administer medication for the purpose of bringing about a peaceful death,¹ have in a collection of chapters on “Medicine after the Holocaust”? Most of us will appreciate immediately that the Nazi regimes proram to terminate lives deemed unworthy by the state, including under the guise of “medical treatment,” bears no relation to the choice of a terminally ill individual to choose to exercise a measure of control over his or her own impending death. This chapter seeks to illuminate the differences between these scenarios and to provide an overview of the background and status of aid in dying in the United States.