gonizing death. Certainly they wish that the pain were relieved and that health restored; that the patient not die but go on living and sharing concerns and joys together. The decision to forgo life-sustaining treatment must surely be as hard as any that arises in a hospital or within a family. Principles to guide such a decision are elusive, because whenever the question arises, some of our most cherished values are in conflict. People believe in the value of life but it is not clear that all life has value no matter what. People believe that suffering should be reduced, but sometimes that means shortening life. People also believe that patients' wishes should be respected, but that seems not always best for the patients. It is expected of doctors to be strong champions of life, but people fear their capacity to impose continuous life.Even the best doctors, given all the pressures that they must bear, could benefit from more structured ways of remaining informed about how their efforts are viewed by their patients. Most doctors find themselves spending more time than ever before dealing with decisions they were never trained to make, decisions at the edge of life. He is uncomfortable when the issue turns from how to sustain a patient's life to such questions as whether to stop providing nourishment, thereby, to end a patient's life. It is strongly believed that physicians can play a positive role in the active euthanasia of mentally competent, terminally ill people who request assistance in ending their own lives. As James Rachels says in the article Active and Passive Euthanasia, "Being allowed to die can be slow and painful, whereas being given a lethal Shanty Gray Pg. 3injection is quick and painless". It is crucial that physicians who choose to help dying patients in this way should be free to do so without the fear of criminal prosecution. In the article Rising to the Occasion of Our Death, William May says, "It solves the prob...
