Suicide Docs

From the Economist in October 2012 was an article on physician assisted suicide.  In the United States, terminally ill patients can apply for permission to end their lives with the guidance of a doctor in Oregon and Washington state.  Several safeguards are in place to prevent this from becoming the default death pathway (only 0.2% of total Oregonian deaths).  Also, I had no idea that Holland, Switzerland, and Belgium allow assisted suicide even in non-terminally ill citizens.  So you can be suffering from, say, severe acne vulgaris, in the Netherlands and be within your rights to seek immediate death from a certified death-administering professional.  Revelatory, indeed.  And heartwarming to read about on a Sunday.  My main interest is in the doctors who are contracted to carry out these ghoulish deeds.  By physician assisted, I think what everyone has in mind some sort of benign, humane, non-invasive mode of life sapping.  You lie on a table.  Calming eastern mystic yoga music plays softly in the background.  The room smells of lilac and aloe.  A soothing voice whispers in your ear, "it's going to be alright, peace and love await you".  And then a white robed man with a Francis of Assisian face of compassion slowly injects painless sedatives until you pass out and then the final killing agent is administered while you are in a state of blanked ...
Source: Buckeye Surgeon - Category: Surgeons Authors: Source Type: blogs