ABSTRACT
Physician-assisted suicide should be legally available to all competent adults. It should be legally available just to the terminally ill, or possibly just to the terminally ill and to the severely and permanently disabled. Assisted-suicide advocates frequently paint a picture of the terminally ill in extreme and unrelievable pain, begging to die, and frustrated in this desperate wish by religious fanatics and reactionaries who insist each human life is sacred, regardless of how much the bearer of that life wants to end it. Many non-life-threatening illnesses, such as rheumatoid arthritis, cause severe unrelievable pain, and many terminal illnesses do not. In fact, a recent study found that severe, uncontrolled pain or the fear of it was a less influential factor than clinical depression in terminally ill patients who requested suicide assistance. The reasoning of the Philosophers Brief can also be applied to actions other than assisted suicide. Selling one's kidney is illegal in the United States.
