Joel Zivot

Last rights: assisted suicide is neither painless nor dignified

iStock 
issue 18 September 2021

Is euthanasia painless? The founder of the British pro-euthanasia movement (and sometime eugenicist) Dr Killick Millard declared in 1931 that his aim was ‘to substitute for the slow and painful death a quick and painless one’. His sentiment is echoed today by the pro-euthanasia group My Death, My Decision, which says that it wants the ‘option of a peaceful, painless, and dignified death’.

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Written by
Joel Zivot
Dr Joel Zivot is an associate professor of anaesthesiology and surgery at the Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta, Georgia.

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