The Magazine

First, Do Harm . . .

A betrayal of the hospice movement.

Mar 19, 2007, Vol. 12, No. 26 • By WESLEY J. SMITH
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The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine has just released a position statement on the issue of physician-assisted suicide, in which it abdicates its core professional responsibility. On the impropriety of permitting doctors to help kill their patients, the association has assumed a position of "studied neutrality."

One of the AAHPM's stated missions is to engage in "public policy advocacy" for hospice and palliative care. Assuming a neutral stance on what may be the most important public policy controversy of our day involving dying people is both a cowardly act and a backdoor repudiation of the long-established philosophy of hospice care, which promises to respect the intrinsic value of each patient's life and to care for dying patients until their natural deaths.

In its "Position Statement on Physician Assisted Death" (PAD is the reigning euphemism for physician-assisted suicide, allowing doctors to pretend they are not participating in the intentional killing of patients), the AAHPM approaches the entire topic with willful naiveté. For example, it states:

Excellent medical care, including state-of-the-art palliative care, can control most symptoms and augment patients' psychosocial and spiritual resources to relieve most suffering near the end of life. On occasion, however, severe suffering persists; in such a circumstance a patient may ask his physician for assistance in ending his life by providing Physician-assisted Death.

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