Assisted suicide advocates believe that physicians should have the legal right to provide their patients with aid in dying. Their efforts to legalize physician- assisted suicide have sparked a great deal of controversy in recent years. One area of debate concerns how legalizing physician-assisted suicide could affect patients’ willingness to trust their doctors.

Opponents of assisted suicide maintain that legalizing the practice would create distrust in patients, particularly the elderly and disabled, who would fear that their doctors might pressure them into choosing assisted suicide over more expensive and possibly unsuccessful treatments. This sense of distrust is expressed by columnist Nat Hentoff, who writes, “If euthanasia becomes legal in this country, will future generations of American physicians feel no qualms about disposing of the unworthy"”

Supporters of assisted suicide claim that legalization would not reduce patients’ trust because...