In actual suicide facilitation, existential issues–such as fears about being a burden or loss of dignity–rather than untreatable pain are the reasons people cite for requesting assisted suicide.
These are important issues that need to be addressed. But, like pain, they are relievable and often respond to compassionate interventions.
The thing is, these very real difficulties also could apply to the non-terminally ill elderly and people with disabilities–threatening these populations with the assisted suicide temptation the more doctor-prescribed death is celebrated in the media and normalized in society.
And now, an article published in JAMA Internal Medicine–in the context of intensive care treatment decisions–creates a new “worse than death” medical category.
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