by Daniel Callahan

About the author: Daniel Callahan is cofounder and president of the Hastings Center and author of numerous books on medical ethics, including The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death.

[An] argument one often hears both in the Netherlands and in this country is that euthanasia and assisted suicide are perfectly compatible with the aims of medicine. I would note at the very outset that a physician who participates in another person’s suicide already abuses medicine. Apart from depression (the main statistical cause of suicide), people commit suicide because they find life empty, oppressive, or meaningless. Their judgment is a judgment about the value of continued life, not only about health (even if they are sick). Are doctors now to be given the right to make judgments about the...