ABSTRACT
To what extent would legalization of euthanasia involve risks of harm to patients and third parties and to what extent can these risks be minimized by legal safeguards?
I consider the following risks:
‘Doctors who want to get rid of the costs of treatment and care for an uninsured patient will be tempted to get rid of the patient, if they can present their action as being done on the patient's request’.
‘Legalization threatens certain vulnerable groups of people’.
‘Death wishes are for the most part not determined by pain and similar physical symptoms but by the effects of the loss of functional abilities. Such death wishes send the message to all people who are similarly disabled that their lives are of lesser value’.
‘Many requests will not be sufficiently voluntary; people will be manipulated by overburdened caregivers and others to request euthanasia’.
‘Any request can be the product of depression. Most doctors have little expertise in recognizing depression and in the case of a euthanasia request the opinions of experts diverge. We can therefore never be sufficiently certain that the request is well-considered’.
