Your doctors may be assisting in more suicides than you realize, according to a study in last week's New England Journal of Medicine. A group led by clinical psychologist Lee Slome reports that in a survey of 118 San Francisco-area physicians working with AIDS patients, 53% indicated (via an anonymous, self-administered questionnaire) that they had knowingly prescribed a deadly dose of narcotics to patients who wanted to die.
Most of the doctors who provided such aid, says Slome, did so from one to three times. One doctor admitted to 100 instances, a tally far outstripping that of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. (Kevorkian, of course, practices a more activist suicide assistance.)
The report hints at the ravages and despair that can attend advanced AIDS, and of the partnership that can develop between long-term HIV patients and their physicians.
But its findings can be used by either side in the legal debate. Champions of a perceived constitutional right to assisted suicide will argue that if so many doctors feel impelled to break a law on their patients' behalf, that law probably needs retooling.
Opponents, however, may suggest that the current system works just fine: a statute outlawing assisted suicide, loosely enforced, will be reluctantly violated by doctors when necessary but will still express society's view that euthanasia -- whether practiced by relatives, healthcare organizations or a government out to save money -- remains taboo.
(New England Journal of Medicine, 800/789-9000)