Discuss attitudes toward physician-assisted suicide as a form of active voluntary euthanasia.

Answers will vary. The issue of physician-assisted suicide continues to be debated among physicians and in the lay community, even though the American Medical Association and a majority of physicians oppose it. Physicians themselves are split on the question of whether this form of active euthanasia is ever justified. Physicians opposing assisted suicides often cite the belief that it goes against thousands of years of medical tradition of treating patients. Euthanasia is legal in the Netherlands, but that does not mean that it is undertaken lightly. For example, when a patient or a patient's family requests euthanasia to relieve a terminally ill patient's suffering, about half of the physicians try to avoid the issue because their values oppose it or it is emotionally burdensome. Many of these physicians suggest that it is often possible to lessen patients' suffering without hastening their death. Physicians who were open to euthanasia explained that patients' suffering sometimes could not be lessened with medicine. A nationally representative survey of American physicians found that 69% object to physician-assisted suicide, 18% object to terminal sedation, but only 5% object to withdrawal of artificial life support. Religion played a role in the physicians' attitudes: 84% of highly religious physicians objected to physician-assisted suicide, as compared with 55% of physicians who were not particularly religious; 25% of highly religious physicians objected to terminal sedation, as compared with 12% of less religious physicians. A survey of 988 terminally ill patients found that 60.2% said they supported euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide in general, but only 10.6% reported seriously considering it for themselves. Patients who were 65 and older and who felt more appreciated by others were less likely to consider euthanasia and suicide. Not surprisingly, depression, pain, and substantial caregiving needs all contributed to consideration of suicide. Euthanasia, defined as performance of the death-inducing act by another person (such as a physician), is illegal nearly everywhere in the United States. Oregon and Washington enacted Death with Dignity Acts (in 1997 and 2008, respectively). Death with Dignity Act are being signed into law elsewhere as well. These acts in Oregon and Washington enable terminally ill patients to ask physicians to prescribe lethal doses of medication. The medication is then administered by patients themselves.