Peter Rogatz

About the author: Peter Rogatz is a physician who previously served as a professor of community and preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He is also a founding board member of Compassion in Dying of New York, a member of the Ethics Committee of Hospice Care Network in Long Island and Queens, and a member of the Committee on Bioethical Issues of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

Physician-assisted suicide, a practice related to euthanasia, involves a physician providing medications or other means to a patient with the understanding that the patient intends to use them to commit suicide. Although opponents have many objections to this practice, and it is prohibited in every state except for Oregon, two principles outweigh all of their arguments: patient autonomy, or...