ABSTRACT
Assisted Dying' refers to a situation where mentally competent, terminally ill patients ask for assistance to end their lives and where such assistance is given in the form of a doctor providing a lethal dose which the dying person must be able to self-administer. Campaigns to legalize Assisted Dying or Voluntary Euthanasia are being actively pursued in France, Britain, Germany, and several US states so that it would seem likely that the number of jurisdictions where some form of Assisted Dying is legal will increase. Assisted Dying raises a number of medical issues. One is the difficulty of predicting the course of the disease. Medical advances in palliative care, especially as mediated through the Hospice Movement, have been among the great success stories of the twentieth century. Philosophical issues revolve around issues of personal autonomy and how we should make sense of the concept of the intrinsic dignity of the human person.
