When you are dying of terminal cancer, the compassionate thing to do is to stop the pain with morphine so that the patient can rest and not suffer more than is necessary. The purpose is not to kill, but pain treatment. The pain medicine also has the effect of hastening your death because of the amount needed to treat such intense pain.
When you get chemotherapy sometimes it kills you while trying to save you.
Using morphine or chemotherapy in these case is not suicide or assisted suicide. The intent is not to kill you; it is to treat you.
Absolutely true, and I am absolutely in support of that. My father, in fact, died of terminal cancer last fall and hospice (and morphine) were wonderful in helping him remain comfortable until he passed away.
The article, however, alludes to physician assisted suicide which is a different matter entirely. We have had both coercion and non-terminal but depressed folks involved in physician assisted suicide here in Oregon. Many more cases have been documented in the Netherlands.
My personal favorite (in Oregon)was the daughter who wanted her mother to choose physician assisted suicide. The first doctor noted the daughter, not the mother, was the advocate for it and that the mother was depressed. The daughter shopped around for another doctor who would not interfere, found one, and the mother is now dead.
I don't like suicide, as it is taking the place of God in choosing time and means of death. I, however, would not interfere with a competent adult's choice to do it.
That said, the availability of physician assisted suicide in a world of rising medical costs and lowered personal ethics is a prescription for abuse and coercion of the elderly, IMHO.