Mental Illness, Physical Illness, and the Legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide

The author argues that a basic difficulty with legalizing physician-assisted suicide has gone largely ignored: that it is impossible to presume that anyone can realistically identify severely ill individuals seeking lethal drugs from the physicians in order to die, & to do so willingly, knowingly, & voluntarily. This article explores the two main reasons that the author finds this to be so, the first of which concerns medical science, & the second which rests on medical practice.