It has been reported that the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine has dropped its opposition to physician assisted suicide.
In an official statement, the academy registers a desire to remain in a state of "studied neutrality"-or in other words, blase-regarding whether or not doctors adopt a proactive position in providing powerful drugs to patients so that those patients can kill themselves.
Now if you think about this for 30 seconds, you can see the grave danger in such a statement.
Hospice should be a place where love and care abound, not powerful drugs to help the recipieint die sooner. And while I have always believed that "palliative care" could be either very good or very bad depending on who is administering the pain killers, this latest news pretty much seals my opinion on the subject.
How about yours?
