Palliative Care and Hypocrisy
It is suggested that doctors who ease the way until the final breath are in effect practising euthanasia and that, in opposing voluntary assisted dying, they are being hypocritical.
With good palliative care the patient may yet wake and communicate, but with euthanasia the medication is repeated, and if needed repeated again with a larger dose until the intended death has occurred.
The former upholds the honour and integrity of medicine, in line with all ethical codes in the history of medicine. There is no hypocrisy.
~ Letter in The West Australian, Saturday 26 October 2019.
[The title I had was substituted with “Medical Codes”, which was slightly unfortunate in that the letter was partly in response to a headline of a famous WA doctor saying that opponents of the legislation were being hypocritical.]___
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