Abstract

With breathtalung speed, traditional criminal prohibitions against assisted suicide have been declared unconstitutional in twelve states, including California and New York. This poses great promise and great peril. The promise is that competent terminally ill patients, as a compassionate measure of last resort, will have the option of putting an end to their suffering by physician-assisted suicide. More sigmficant, legally permitting this controversial option may be a catalyst for doctors, health care institutions, and society to improve the care of the dying. PAS should be limited only to those relatively few competent patients who continue to suffer intolerably despite unrestrained efforts to palliate and who face a continued existence that they regard as worse than death. When dying patients know they will not be abandoned to miserable and pointless suffering if palliative care fails, they will be fortified to cope better with the process of dying.The immediate peril is that PAS will become a quick fix, available on demand to any patient diagnosed as terminally ill, thus bypassing palliative care and producing premature deaths.