Last updated on: 8/13/2009 | Author: ProCon.org

Herbert Hendin, MD Biography

Title:
Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at New York Medical College
Position:
Con to the question "Should Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legal?"
Reasoning:

“The debate over assisted suicide has helped to stimulate the medical community, and palliative care specialists in particular, into accepting the challenge to provide better care at the end of life. What we have learned from the Netherlands, Australia, and Oregon, however, indicates that legal sanction for assisted suicide and euthanasia complicates, distracts, and interferes with the effort to improve end-of-life care.”

Cowritten with Kathleen Foley, “Conclusion,” The Case against Assisted Suicide: For the Right to End-of-Life Care, 2002
Involvement and Affiliations:
  • Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, New York Medical College
  • Co-founder, Director of Special Projects, and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Suicide Prevention International (SPI), 2006-present
  • Former Medical Director, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
  • Former Executive Director, Center for Psychosocial Studies
  • Recipient, Louis I. Dublin Award, American Association of Suicidology
Education:
  • MD, New York University School of Medicine, 1949
  • BA, Columbia College, 1945
Other:
  • Testified before Congress on July 14, 1998 for the House of Representatives Subcommittee hearing on Lethal Drug Abuse Prevention Act
Quoted in:
  1. What Is Physician-Assisted Suicide?
  2. Is the Opposition to Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide Primarily Religious in Nature?
  3. Would Improving Palliative Care Decrease Patient Requests for Physician-Assisted Suicide?