Physician Assistance in Dying: A Subtler Slippery Slope

Shortly after discharge, my patient's husband called to inform me that his wife had died suddenly the previous evening. The call was not a surprise. I felt she had silently communicated to me that she was taking matters into her own hands, and the quantity of narcotics I prescribed was enough to be lethal if ingested as a single dose. I was aware that this was a possible and perhaps even likely outcome. I could have limited the drug amount, but this would have required that she return frequently to the clinic. I believed that such restrictions were an affront to her dignity and her autonomy. And she could always stockpile her drugs to achieve the same purpose . In the midst of the ongoing contretemps surrounding the legality of physician‐assisted death, there is a grey zone of physician complicity. My action in providing my patient with a potentially lethal quantity of narcotics certainly marks me as an assistant, albeit at a remove, in her suicide .