Go gentle?
The drugs used for executing American prisoners and the drugs used for assisting suicide are more or less the same. Do they guarantee that patients will, as in Keats' poem, “cease upon the midnight with no pain”.
Um, no, or at least no guarantees. Just as some prisoners are tormented in botched executions, some patients in the state of Oregon have taken the lethal drug, gone unconscious, and awakened — sometimes days later. Read all about it in our lead article.
Michael Cook
Modern medicine is great, but it cannot guarantee a quick and easy death
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assisted suicide
Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.
Latest posts by Michael Cook (see all)
- How long can you put off seeing the doctor because of lockdowns? - December 3, 2021
- House of Lords debates assisted suicide—again - October 28, 2021
- Spanish government tries to restrict conscientious objection - October 28, 2021
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