rivka

You are lumping all terminal situations together. There may be no medical treatment that alleviates the situation. If I were in my mother's situation (but with my own values regarding the moral meaning of suicide) I believe it would be rational to conclude that there was not a way that I would get better. Now you may assume that were you treating this hypothetical patient you could find a way to give meaning to her life. I urge you to be more realistic about the amount of skilled state of the art care given to patients in general, much less elderly residents of nursing homes. Doctors do not spend hours at the bedside of each patient, assisting them to tease meaning out of their miserable situation and trying various state-of-the-art alternative treatments to see how well they will work, or giving personalized therapy. Your HIV patient was not the norm.

A decision to allow assisted suicide is not a determination that the rest of the patient's life is worthless, it is a determination that the patient is capable of deciding this for themselves. In Oregon it seems that many such patients obtain comfort from the knowledge that they have the control to end life should they wish to, yet never exercise that option.

I'm afraid that your statement that I don't have to agree with you is not quite true. If your position prevails I DO have to agree with you because I will have no choice.