Moral and Practical Challenges of Physician-Assisted Suicide
Published in: JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, v. 289, no. 17, May 7, 2003, p. 2282
Posted on RAND.org on January 01, 2003
Physicians play an inescapable role in presenting and shaping health care decisions. Patients and families find it essential to rely on physicians when fear, lack of information, unfamiliarity, and other factors limit their independence and authority. Legalizing PAS threatens to make patients and families suspicious at a time when they would like to rely on a trusting relationship with their physician.
This report is part of the RAND Corporation External publication series. Many RAND studies are published in peer-reviewed scholarly journals, as chapters in commercial books, or as documents published by other organizations.
The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit institution that helps improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. RAND's publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors.