Currently Accepted Practices That are Known to Lead to Death, and PAS: is There an Ethically Relevant Difference?

The author argues that there are ethically significant differences between physician assisted suicide (PAS) and a number of currently accepted practices in the care of patients at the end of life that lead to their deaths, and that one may accept these practices while rejecting PAS. He does so by contrasting PAS with 1) the refusal of medical care resulting in death; 2) the forgoing or withdrawal of medical measures that lead to death; and 3)palliative sedation that causes death. He argues that the fundamental ethical difference between these practices and PAS is that PAS necessarily involves deliberate, intentional killing while these other practices do not.