ABSTRACT
In the United States, tremendous changes have taken place in the public debate over assisted suicide and euthanasia. Twenty-three percent of a sample of San Francisco physicians indicated that they would grant an AIDS patient's request for assisted suicide, and public attitude surveys demonstrate that 65% of Americans support voluntary active euthanasia. Social worker Russel Ogden discovered that half of 34 assisted suicides among men with AIDS in Vancouver were botched, with resultant increased suffering for both patient and those who tried to assist. Although there are no data regarding doctor-patient conversations about assisted suicide, it is author experience that such discussions occur with greater frequency in AIDS than in other medical illnesses. But in AIDS work, mental health professionals encounter patients for whom all treatments, medical and psychiatric, have been exhausted and who wish most of all for death.
