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Catch-22 and Physician-Assisted Suicide-Reply
William A. Hensel, MD
Family Practice Center Greensboro, NC
Arch Fam Med. 1995;4(7):581-582.
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In reply
I thank Standke for the opportunity to clarify some points in "Dr Aesop." I agree wholeheartedly with his assertions that physicians have an obligation to comply with their patients' wishes and that "patients always have the right to refuse care." Where we apparently disagree is how much ambiguity is present in the patient I described. Standke likens Mrs Delaney's situation to that of his patient, yet the two cases differ in three fundamental ways. First, the patient of Standke wanted to discontinue a medical intervention, the ventilator, which was certainly her right. Mrs Delaney wanted me to prescribe a lethal dose of sleeping pills or administer a lethal injection of narcotics for the expressed purpose of ending her life—a fact to which I only allude in the story. In short, she wanted me to cross a line, currently forbidden in my state, and enter the territory of physician-assisted suicide. The
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