Professional Norms and Physician Attitudes toward Euthanasia

Carson Rob , “Washington's I-119,” Hastings Center Report, 22, no. 2 (1992): 7–9.

Ibid.

Questionnaire sent to approximately 300 Seattle physicians (internists at the University of Washington and the Pacific Medical Center, and all physicians at Group Health Central). The response rate was approximately 65 percent. These physicians may be more sympathetic to aid-in-dying than most physicians in the state, and the questionnaire was designed to assess reasons for attitudes rather than to obtain a representative sample of opinion.

See Freidson Eliot , Profession of Medicine (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1975), pp. 88–90; Blum Richard H. Sadusk J. Waterson R. , The Management of the Doctor-Patient Relationship (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960), p. 277; and Vladeck Bruce C. , Editorial: “Beliefs vs. Behaviors in Healthcare Decision Making,” American Journal of Public Health, 83, no. 1 (1993): 13–14.

Rachels James , The End of Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 159.

Quoted in Rachels , op. cit., p. 1.

Battin Margaret P. , “Assisted Suicide: Can We Learn from Germany?,” Hastings Center Report, 22, no. 2 (1992): 44–51.

“Voters Pamphlet,” Office of Secretary of State, King County Division of Records and Elections, Addition No. 18 (1991), p. 15.

Callahan Daniel , “‘Aid-in-Dying’: The Social Dimensions,” Commonweal, August 9 (1991): 476–80.

Callahan Daniel , “When Self-Determination Runs Amok,” Hastings Center Report, 22, no. 2 (1992): 52–55.

Capron Alexander Morgan , “Euthanasia in the Netherlands. American Observations,” Hastings Center Report, 11, no, 2 (1992): 30–33.

Gaylin Willard Kass Leon R. Pellegrino Edmund D. Siegler Mark , “Doctors Must Not Kill,” JAMA, 259 (1988): 439–40.

Reported at the conference “Managing Mortality,” Hotel Sofitel, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dec. 3–5, 1992.

Brock Dan W. , “Voluntary Active Euthanasia,” Hastings Center Report, 11, no. 2 (1992): 10–22. See pages 12–13 for a discussion of a similar example in which a greedy relative, for financial reasons, wishes the patient to die.

Kass Leon R. , “Why Doctors Must Not Kill,” Commonweal, Supplement (1991): 472–76.

President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Deciding to Forgo Life-Sustaining Treatment (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), p. 64.

Ibid.

Anonymous, “It's Over, Debbie,” JAMA, 259 (1988): 272.

Gaylin , op. cit.

Kass , op. cit., p. 474.

Edelstein L. , Ancient Medicine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967), pp. 3–65; Amundsen Darrel W. , “The Physician's Obligation to Prolong Life: A Medical Duty Without Classical Roots,” Hastings Center Report, 8, no. 4 (1978): 23–31; and Carick P. , Medical Ethics in Antiquity (Boston, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1985), pp. 127–50.

Amundsen , op. cit, p. 24.

Edelstein , op. cit.

Amundsen , op. cit.; and Loewy Erich H. , “Healing and Killing, Harming and Not Harming: Physician Participation in Euthanasia and Capital Punishment,” The Journal of Clinical Ethics, 3 (1992): 29–34.

Amundsen , op. cit., p. 25.

Jonsen Albert R. , “Beyond the Physicians' Reference—The Ethics of Active Euthanasia,” West J. Med, 149 (1988): 195–98.

Chapman C.B. , “On the Definition and Teaching of the Medical Ethic,” N. Engl. J. Med., 301 (1979): 630; and Preston Thomas A. , The Clay Pedestal (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1986), pp. 90–93.

Starr Paul , The Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982), pp. 264–66, 200–18, 321.

Relman Arnold S. , “What Market Values Are Doing to Medicine,” The Atlantic Monthly, March (1992): 99–106.

“New Ethical Principles for Nation's Physicians Voted by AMA House,” American Medical News, August 1/8 (1980): 9.

Misbin Robert I. , “Physicians' Aid in Dying,” N. Engl. J. Med., 325 (1991): 1307–11.

See also Gaylin (op. cit., p. 2140), who conclude: “And we must say to the broader community that if it insists on tolerating or legalizing active euthanasia, it will have to find nonphysicians to do its killing.”

Callahan Daniel , What Kind of Life: The Limits of Medical Progress (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), pp. 221–50.

Pellegrino Edmund D. , “Doctors Must Not Kill,” The Journal of Clinical Ethics, 3, no. 2 (1992): 95–102.

Kass , op. cit., p. 474.

Ibid.; and Singer Peter A. Siegler Mark , “Euthanasia—A Critique,” N. Engl. J. Med., 322 (1990): 1881–83.

Capron , op. cit., p. 32.

Meier Diane E. , “Physician-Assisted Dying: Theory and Reality,” The Journal of Clinical Ethics, 3, no. 1 (1992): 35–37.

Soloman Mildred Z. O'Donnell Lydia Jennings Bruce , “Decisions Near the End of Life: Professional Views on Life-Sustaining Treatments,” American Journal of Public Health, 83 (1993): 14–23.

Loewy , op. cit.

Quill Timothy E. Cassel Christine K. Meier Diane E. , “Care of the Hopelessly Ill. Proposed Clinical Criteria for Physician-Assisted Suicide,” N.Engl. J. Med., 327, no. 19 (1992): 1380–84; and Wanzer Sidney H. Federman Daniel D. James Adelstein S. , “The Physician's Responsibility toward Hopelessly Ill Patients,” N. Engl. J. Med., 320, no. 13 (1989): 844–49.

Rachels James , “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” N. Engl. J. Med., 292, no. 2 (1975): 78–80.

Rachels , op. cit., p. 118.