eir existence is, and how easily they and their families could be dispirited and demoralized into "accepting" this allegedly merciful end.I have found that what patients at the end of life require -- and want -- more than anything else is a system of medical care that will tend to their needs -- the needs of the ill and their family -- more than whatever economic or institutional imperative may be at hand. In other words, the terminally ill need palliation -- in all its many forms. It is, unfortunately, a system of care which we American physicians have been slow to understand, and moreover, have at times resisted outright. It is a system of care which places the experience of the patient -- and his or her family -- at the top of our hierarchy of priorities. It is a system which does not view the inevitability of death as a failure, but rather, as the natural end, the pre-ordained end, of those of us who call ourselves mortal. It is a system of care that does not abandon the terminally ill to a panoply of unwanted, and generally futile, therapies; therapies which will punctuate the dying process by fits and starts, but will only forestall the inevitable, although only after we have brutalized our patients. It is, finally, a system of care which marshals all the resources of medical and nursing systems to make sure that those who are dying are also living well while they die.That we have not yet obtained this sort of system is not, in any way, to sanction the alternative now before this Committee, the American courts, and the American people. It is, in fact, my most deeply held belief that were we to pursue assisted-suicide and euthanasia as our response to the terminally ill, we would soon find ourselves -- ourselves, my fellow physicians and allied health care workers -- quite literally putting to death hundreds of thousands of others under the guise of "mercy" and "autonomy". If the experience of other countries and other cultures wit...
