For most doctors, physician assisted suicide will not change almost anything in day-to-day practice. It will happen away from the mainstream of care, available but not obvious. Doctors will want reassurance that neither patients nor doctors get coerced. But beyond that, most physicians will not get passionate either way.
Doctors usually avoid social activism. As a group, they support social movements but rarely create movements of their own.
Doctors agree on one moral absolute: Thou shalt not express a moral opinion about the behaviours, beliefs or decisions of thy patient. Everyone is a potential patient. Ergo, doctors should not express opinions about anyone’s choice. Society expects this – demands this – of their doctors. Modern medical trainees learn objectivity before all else.
People used to expect doctors to toddle the streets offering wisdom for healthy living and good character like the sheriff on the Any Griffith show. Those days are gone. Post war individualism promoted maximal freedom in personal morality.
Doctors focus on medical problems, not emotions or ethics. Doctors learn to separate morals from medical tasks. I’m often surprised when my wife takes the opposite approach on a medical issue. Doctors can separate medical problems from their social context. Physicians often turn a scientific lens onto social problems to see how social issues impact human organisms. But doctors do not care about social issues in the same way they care about surgery and pap smears.
Physician assisted suicide will probably develop like abortions. Doctors usually hear about abortions after the fact. Patients decide with their families then go to a clinic. Physicians rarely have to agonize over termination. MDs help before and after the event but do not discuss it much in between.
Doctors live as a tiny part of the social fabric just like everyone else. We work hard and try to help people where possible. We enjoy our family and buy lots of stuff. We don’t want to die with unfulfilled dreams. Counter-cultural revolutionaries are rare.
Politicians will probably set up physician assisted suicide like abortion. It will happen in discrete clinics with staff that want to be there. No provider will be forced to participate. Family doctors won’t write referrals. Doctors will carry on looking after all the other medical problems relieved that the courts took care of things.
Physician assisted suicide will be a non-issue for most doctors. That’s what society wants. Or does it?
Please share a comment or read “Bad Idea – Physician Assisted Suicide” (next post).
), doctors should leave their personal morality at the door (which is, of course, a moral position of its own).
, also wrote about uncertainty in 
. Whether people call it art, wisdom or clinical judgment, medicine appears less black and white and more often frustratingly grey. It makes medicine an intrinsically moral profession. Even with solid, evidence-based treatment guidelines, doctors still must work to explain, encourage and support patients to carry through with what’s good for them. Governments started paying physicians incentives based on how many patients doctors convince to agree with current clinical guidelines where they exist. Medicine is not crisp and clear. Physicians require acute moral sensitivity since almost everything they do involves moral agency (see 
