Timothy E. Quill

Timothy E. Quill is a doctor who helped a terminally ill patient, “Diane,” commit suicide and then wrote about the experience in 1991 in the New England Journal of Medicine. He is also one of the plaintiffs who successfully challenged New York’s law against assisted suicide in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (as of April 1997 this case was under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court). The following viewpoint is an excerpt from Quill’s book Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge, in which Quill argues that doctors who help their terminally ill patients to commit suicide out of compassion for their suffering are acting ethically and morally, while those who purposely undermedicate such patients to prevent potential suicides by overdosing are unethical and immoral.

As you read, consider the...