Leon R. Kass

Leon R. Kass argues in the following viewpoint that legalizing physician-assisted suicide will have extremely dangerous consequences for individuals and society. The legalization of physician- assisted suicide will irrevocably damage the doctor-patient relationship, Kass maintains, as doctors will be transformed from healers into prescribers of death. He asserts that if physician- assisted suicide becomes legal, the elderly, terminally ill, and disabled will feel it is their duty to choose suicide. Furthermore, Kass contends, legalizing physician-assisted suicide will lead to the acceptance of euthanasia performed without the patient’s consent. Kass is an ethicist, physician, and biochemist at the University of Chicago.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Kass, what is the inviolable rule of the Hippocratic Oath?
2. Why is the practice of physician-assisted suicide unregulable, in the author’s opinion...