There are limits to palliative care.

Even under hospice, where one would assume excellent palliative care,

there are those who spend their last months in uncontrolled pain.

And this unbearable suffering, despite our best efforts, leads to request by patients

to end their life prematurely. Physician-assisted suicide, or perhaps more accurately,

physician-assisted dying, or medical aid in dying, allows a terminally ill to end their lives through the voluntary

self-administration of a lethal dose of medication expressly prescribed by a physician for

that purpose.

U.S. public opinion has shifted towards greater acceptance of the process.

By 2017, fully two-thirds of U.S. adults support legalizing the practice,

though in the same year dozens of states reviewed and rejected legalization.

A similar percentage of terminally ill patients supported, though only about one in nine

and seriously considered requesting it for themselves.

Geriatrics physicians are split with 47% supporting and 52% opposing the practice.

Of 150 professional medical societies, not a single one has come out in favor of medical

aid and dying.

Only 12 took any sort of position, mostly in opposition, like the American

Medical Association, though some, including the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine,

took an official neutral position. At the time I write this, physician-assisted suicide.

It's only legal in nine states plus the District of Columbia, California,

Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, plus New Jersey in 2019,

and New Mexico in 2021. After or pending legalization, most of the affected state medical societies adopted a neutral position.

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