Assisted Suicide Unethical

The letter to the editor in the August 4 issue from Dr. E. James Lieberman regarding Oregon's Death With Dignity Act anticipates the possibility of APA's taking a supportive position on physician-assisted suicide at some time. If this were to happen, it would represent a drastic departure of American psychiatry from the 2,400-year-old Hippocratic tradition in medicine with its injunction to “first, do no harm” and a challenge to the traditional ethics of the medical profession, as affirmed by the AMA.

Physicians have traditionally been healers, not killers, a distinction that is important to the doctor-patient relationship. Patients trust physicians to act compassionately in their best interest. This includes our obligation to improve our skills at pain management and palliative care to keep patients comfortable as the end of life approaches. Of course, the assault on life usually begins with verbal engineering and carefully crafted euphemisms to soften the impact of what is being proposed, but even this kind of verbal sophistry cannot disguise the nihilism of what Dr. Lieberman is advocating, a situational ethics position that devalues human life. APA should reject it.