Two significant, apparently unrelated, trends have emerged in American society and medicine. First, American medicine is reexamining its approach to dying. The Institute of Medicine, the American Medical Association and private funding organizations have recognized that too many dying people suffer from pain and other distress that clinicians can prevent or relieve. Second, this past decade has marked a sharp increase in the number of physicians prosecuted for criminal negligence based on arguably negligent patient care. The case often cited as (...) a watershed is People u. Einaugfer, which involved a New York nursing home patient whose physician was convicted in 1993 of two criminal misdemeanors after he ordered an elderly dialysis patient to be tube fed through a peritoneal dialysis Catheter.How is the growing awareness of dying patients’ pain and the increasing willingness of prosecutors to charge physicians with crimes connected? Pain at the end of life is frequently treated with narcotics, prescription drugs that are closely regulated by state and federal law. That complex web of laws—and a growing fear of legal sanctions—has deterred physicians from prescribing controlled substances. As those legal sanctions move from disciplinary actions to criminal charges, physicians’ fears may expand. (shrink)

Two significant, apparently unrelated, trends have emerged in American society and medicine. First, American medicine is reexamining its approach to dying. The Institute of Medicine, the American Medical Association and private funding organizations have recognized that too many dying people suffer from pain and other distress that clinicians can prevent or relieve. Second, this past decade has marked a sharp increase in the number of physicians prosecuted for criminal negligence based on arguably negligent patient care. The case often cited as (...) a watershed is People u. Einaugfer, which involved a New York nursing home patient whose physician was convicted in 1993 of two criminal misdemeanors after he ordered an elderly dialysis patient to be tube fed through a peritoneal dialysis Catheter.How is the growing awareness of dying patients’ pain and the increasing willingness of prosecutors to charge physicians with crimes connected? Pain at the end of life is frequently treated with narcotics, prescription drugs that are closely regulated by state and federal law. That complex web of laws—and a growing fear of legal sanctions—has deterred physicians from prescribing controlled substances. As those legal sanctions move from disciplinary actions to criminal charges, physicians’ fears may expand. (shrink)

Although the Supreme Court's separate opinions in two physician-assisted suicide cases failed to speak with a decisive voice on some issues, the Court unanimously agreed that no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide exists. Most of the opinions also agreed on the need to provide adequate pain relief, including if necessary terminal sedation. Whether to decriminalize and regulate physician assisted suicide has been left to the states.