Who Knows Best Patient or Physician
... The right of choice between a patient’s wish for physician-assisted death due to terminal illness; and the physician’s duty to keep a patient alive till natural death, has opponents and proponents arguing which is best for the patient. ... I’ve chosen these essays because one gives an argument for physician-assisted suicide; and the other for a suicidal tendency in terminally-ill patients which motivates their need for physician-assisted suicide. In Quill’s essay, he re-accounts his experience in assisting a terminally ill patient make their own decision about whether to end their life. He advocates that his responsibility as a doctor is to discuss and exhaust all the possible options or routes with the patient before they make their final decision to give up their life. ... He continues that when a patient learns of their terminal illness, they fall in a state similar to those who want to commit suicide.