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Palliative care and physician-assisted suicide clearly share bioethical and legal space as they feature similar collisions between state interests, professional compassion and personal autonomy. They also overlap in more practical terms. One of the reasons patients may consider suicide and request physician assistance is because of untreated pain, pain that today is more likely treatable. Second, palliative care may lead to a patient’s death possibly leading the state to suspect that assisted suicide had been disguised as palliative care.

Reports, Task Forces, Professional Organizations, etc.
The New York State Task Force on Life and the Law, When Death is Sought: Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in the Medical Context, May 1994 [HTML]
American Academy of Pain Management (AAPM) Discussion- Physician-Assisted Suicide [HTML]
John Glasson, Report of the Council of Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the American Medical Association, 10 ISSUES L. & MED. 91 (1994). $[Westlaw]

• Summary: This position statement promulgated by the American Medical Association affirms that physician-assisted suicide is fundamentally inconsistent with the role of the professional physician. The AMA also suggests that patient requests for assisted suicide signal that more aggressive comfort care mechanisms may be necessary to alleviate the patient’s pain.

• Summary: The AMA Code of Ethics holds that euthanasia is incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer, and notes the importance of adequate pain control at the end of life.