Senior Lecturer at the Department of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Position:
Pro to the question "Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal?"
Reasoning:
"There is no right way to die, and there should be no schism between advocates for better palliative care and advocates for making it possible to hasten death with a physician's help. Good palliative care and the right to make this choice are no more mutually exclusive than good cardiologic care and the availability of heart transplantation. To require dying patients to endure unrelievable suffering, regardless of their wishes is callous and unseemly. Death is hard enough without being bullied. Like the relief of pain, this too is a matter of mercy."
"I've never taken a public position on euthanasia, only on physician-assisted suicide (which I support)."
"The Quality of Mercy," The Willits News, July 11, 2006
Experts
MDs, JDs (Lawyers), PhDs and Religious Leaders with significant involvement in end-of-life issues. [Because end-of-life dilemmas require medical, ethical, legal, and in some case religious considerations, we view MDs, PhDs with a bio-ethical focus, and JDs/religious leaders with significant involvement as "experts" in the euthanasia debate.] [Note: Experts definition varies by site.]
Involvement and Affiliations:
Senior Lecturer, Department of Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Former Editor-in-Chief, New England Journal of Medicine
Fellow of the American College of Physicians (FACP)
Member, Association of American Physicians
Member, Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of the Sciences
Member, Alpha Omega Alpha National Honor Medical Society
Named one of the 25 most influential Americans, Time magazine, 1997
