Doctors, steer clear

Cumberlege states that doctors should steer clear of assisted
suicide(1).

There is some ambivalence what the first goal of doctors should be.
Is it first to treat suffering and then to preserve life or the other way
around. As long as both can be obtained one should of course aim for that.
However, the difficulty comes when one goal cannot be obtained while
obtaining the other. Then, a problematic situation occurs when the only
way life can be preserved is to let the patient suffer in what remains of
his life. If the only way to stop unbearable suffering is assisted suicide
or euthanasia and the patient has expressed the desire to end his life,
can we blame the doctor who obliges?

Often the alternative to not helping a patient end his life, is
either bother him with another doctor who has to tell him he cannot end
his suffering or send the patient home and pray the patient does not make
to much of mess when he does kill himself.

As much as I agree with the Shakespeare quote “First thing thing we
do, let’s kill all the lawyers”, we cannot, and as long as we have them,
they will try to involve themselves. So we should make sure that good
doctors who treat to minimise suffering and according to the wishes of the
patient are safe from persecution.
What lawmakers should worry about is providing a clear set of rules which
should be followed in our treatment of last resort for unbearable
suffering.

(1) Cumberlege J. Assisted suicide: doctors, steer clear. BMJ 2009;
339:b3422.

Competing interests:
None declared