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Physician Aid-in-Dying: Toward A “Harm Reduction” Approach

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2009

Steve Heilig  and
Stephen Jamison
Steve Heilig
Affiliation:
Director of Public Health and Education, San Francisco Medical Society and Co-Editor of Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics.
Stephen Jamison
Affiliation:
Director of Life and Death Consultations, Marin County, California.
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Extract

As a bioethical and social issue, euthanasia has become in the 1990s what abor- tion was in the 1960s. Around the world, a de facto taboo on open discussion of the practice is seemingly falling by the wayside, as recognition increases that “active” euthanasia is taking place in spite of social and legal prohibitions. Euthanasia, or more specifically physician-assisted suicide, has become the most visible bioethical issue of the present era; and in the United States the debate has taken on a prominence and urgency unprecedented in our nation's history.

Type
Special Section: Physician-Aided Death: The Escalating Debate
Information
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Winter 1996 , pp. 113 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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References

Notes

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