Hippocratic Oath and Prohibition of Killing

"If the prevention and relief of suffering are the aims of medical interventions -- and not only the preservation or prolongation of life -- it seems imperative to rethink our profession's reluctance to participate in euthanasia or even be present during an assisted suicide without legal guarantees of protection.

Many opponents of these practices point to the Hippocratic Oath and its prohibition on hastening death. But those who turn to the oath in an effort to shape or legitimize their ethical viewpoints must realize that the statement has been embraced over approximately the past 200 years far more as a symbol of professional cohesion than for its content. Its pithy sentences cannot be used as all-encompassing maxims to avoid the personal responsibility inherent in the practice of medicine. Ultimately, a physician's conduct at the bedside is a matter of individual conscience.

The wisdom of past years and moments enters into the deliberation, but decision making in the present bears a burden that is unique to the particular transaction between the doctor and the individual patient who has come for help. To seek refuge in ancient aphorisms is to turn away from the unique needs of each of our patients who have entrusted themselves to our care."

-- Sherwin Nuland, MD
Clinical Professor of Surgery, Yale School of Medicine
"Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in Practice," New England Journal of Medicine
Feb. 24, 2000

Slippery Slope to Legalized Murder

"Especially with regard to taking life, slippery slope arguments have long been a feature of the ethical landscape, used to question the moral permissibility of all kinds of acts... The situation is not unlike that of a doomsday cult that predicts time and again the end of the world, only for followers to discover the next day that things are pretty much as they were...

We not only can distinguish between [voluntary and non-voluntary] cases [of euthanasia] but do...

We need the evidence that shows that horrible slope consequences are likely to occur. The mere possibility that such consequences might occur, as noted earlier, does not constitute such evidence."

-- R.G. Frey, D.Phil.
Professor of Philosophy, Bowling Green State University
"The Fear of a Slippery Slope," Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: For and Against
1998

Patient Suffering at End-of-Life

"At the Hemlock Society we get calls daily from desperate people who are looking for someone like Jack Kevorkian to end their lives which have lost all quality... Americans should enjoy a right guaranteed in the European Declaration of Human Rights -- the right not to be forced to suffer. It should be considered as much of a crime to make someone live who with justification does not wish to continue as it is to take life without consent."

-- Faye Girsh, Ed.D.
Senior Adviser, Final Exit Network
"How Shall We Die," Free Inquiry
Winter 2001

EUTHANASIA: IT IS YOUR RIGHT TO DIE

"The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of this right is as central to personal autonomy and bodily integrity as rights safeguarded by this Court's decisions relating to marriage, family relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the refusal or termination of life-saving medical treatment. In particular, this Court's recent decisions concerning the right to refuse medical treatment and the right to abortion instruct that a mentally competent, terminally ill person has a protected liberty interest in choosing to end intolerable suffering by bringing about his or her own death.

A state's categorical ban on physician assistance to suicide -- as applied to competent, terminally ill patients who wish to avoid unendurable pain and hasten inevitable death -- substantially interferes with this protected liberty interest and cannot be sustained."

-- American Civil Liberties Union
Amicus Brief, Vacco v. Quill
1996