Embracing slippery slope on physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia could have significant unintended consequences
Abstract
In a recent article Joshua James Hatherley argues that, if physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is morally permissible for patients suffering from somatic illnesses, it should be permissible for psychiatric patients as well. He argues that psychiatric disorders do not necessarily impair decision-making ability, that they are not necessarily treatable and that legalising PAS for psychiatric patients would not diminish research and therapeutic interest in psychiatric treatments or impair their recovery through loss of hope. However, by erasing distinction between somatic and psychiatric disorders on those grounds, he also erases distinction between healthy adults and patients (whether somatic or psychiatric) essentially implying that PAS should be available to all, for all reasons or, ultimately no reason. Furthermore, as psychiatric patients are much more likely to be a source of usable organs for transplantation, their broad inclusion would strengthen the link between PAS/euthanasia and organ donation, potentially undermining both as well as diminishing already declining general trust in medical authorities and professionals and public health authorities and activists.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
MAiD-NT may put vulnerable or marginalized people at risk of seeking death as a relief from poverty, loneliness, or other psychosocial stressors.
“the difficulty that MAiD-NT may put vulnerable or marginalized people at risk of seeking death as a relief from poverty, loneliness, or other psychosocial stressors”
From Debating Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Death in People with Psychiatric Disorders (2022) · cites this paper as [10]
There is an ethical distinction between helping a dying person die peacefully and providing death to a non-dying person.
“the ethical distinction between helping a dying person die peacefully versus providing death to a non-dying person”
From Debating Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Death in People with Psychiatric Disorders (2022) · cites this paper as [10]
The prognosis of non-terminal conditions such as most mental illnesses is unpredictable.
“the unpredictability of prognosis of non-terminal conditions such as most mental illnesses”
From Debating Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Death in People with Psychiatric Disorders (2022) · cites this paper as [10]
Some authors fear MAiD-MD may lead to or increase erosion of patient and public trust in psychiatry by reinforcing the belief that nothing can be done to help people living with mental disorders.
“Some authors fear MAiD-MD may lead to or increase the erosion of patient and public trust in psychiatry [25, 36] by reinforcing the belief that nothing can be done to help people living with mental disorders [37].”
From Medical assistance in dying for people living with mental disorders: a qualitative thematic review (2023) · cites this paper as [36]
Cites
Katschnig, H. (2010) · World Psychiatry · doi:10.1002/j.2051-5545.2010.tb00257.x · Cited by 186 · see citing works
Huang, E. C.-H., Pu, C., Chou, Y., et al. (2018) · INQUIRY The Journal of Health Care Organization Provision and Financing · doi:10.1177/0046958018759174 · Cited by 94 · see citing works
Introspection as a Method and Introspection as a Feature of Consciousness
Feest, U. (2012) · Inquiry · doi:10.1080/0020174x.2012.643619 · Cited by 87 · see citing works
Euthanasia through living organ donation: Ethical, legal, and medical challenges
Bollen, J. A. M., Shaw, D., de Wert, G. M. W. R., et al. (2018) · The Journal of Heart and Lung Transplantation · doi:10.1016/j.healun.2018.07.014 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Is the exclusion of psychiatric patients from access to physician-assisted suicide discriminatory?
Hatherley, J. J. (2019) · Journal of Medical Ethics · doi:10.1136/medethics-2019-105546 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
Death by organ donation: euthanizing patients for their organs gains frightening traction
Ely, E. W. (2019) · Intensive Care Medicine · doi:10.1007/s00134-019-05702-1 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
Alienation of the alienist: psychiatry on the ropes?
Bhugra, D., & Moran, P. (2014) · Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine · doi:10.1177/0141076814525070 · Cited by 9 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Debating Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Death in People with Psychiatric Disorders
Grassi, L., Folesani, F., Marella, M., Tiberto, E., Riba, M. B., Bortolotti, L., Toffanin, T., Palagini, L., Belvederi Murri, M., Biancosino, B., et al. (2022) · Current Psychiatry Reports · doi:10.1007/s11920-022-01339-y · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Physician-Assisted Suicide in Dementia: Paradoxes, Pitfalls and the Need for Prudence
Rajkumar, R. P. (2021) · Frontiers in Sociology · doi:10.3389/fsoc.2021.815233 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Medical assistance in dying for people living with mental disorders: a qualitative thematic review
Favron-Godbout, C., & Racine, E. (2023) · BMC Medical Ethics · doi:10.1186/s12910-023-00971-4 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“Some authors fear MAiD-MD may lead to or increase the erosion of patient and public trust in psychiatry [25, 36] by reinforcing the belief that nothing can be done to help people living with mental disorders [37].”
BackgroundEuthanasia and Medical Assistance in Dying as Challenges for Physicians’ Well-Being
Grassi, L., Gaind, K. S., Nash, T., & Caruso, R. (2022) · Depression, Burnout and Suicide in Physicians · doi:10.1007/978-3-030-84785-2_8 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
- Authors
- Buturovic, Z.
- ORCID
- Buturovic, Zeljka
- Venue
- Journal of Medical Ethics
- Publisher
- BMJ
- Published
- 2020-03-27
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 257-258
- ISSN
- 0306-6800 (ISSN-L)
- 1473-4257
- OpenAlex
- W3013864408
- Cited by
- 15
- References
- 7
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2023: 5 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 3 · 2020: 2
- FWCI
- 2.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Medical Ethics (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Ministarstvo Prosvete, Nauke i Tehnološkog Razvoja (47010)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics and bioethics in healthcare
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative and Oncologic Care
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues
- Keywords
- physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, psychiatric patients, somatic diseases, moral permissibility, decision-making capacity, organ donation, transplantation, slippery slope argument
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
