Physician-Assisted Suicide in the United States: the Underlying Factors in Technology, Health Care and Palliative Medicine, Part One

In an age of rapid advances in life-prolonging treatment, patients & caregivers are increasingly facing tensions in making end-of-life decisions. An examination of the history of health care in the United States reveals technological, economic, & medical factors that have contributed to the problems of terminal care & consequently to the movement of assisted suicide. Overly aggressive treatment in the final stages of terminal illness has enhanced anxieties over a painfully prolonged & expensive dying. These factors have promoted the movement to assisted suicide. (42 refs)