In the past 20 years, more than 175 state campaigns to legalize assisted suicide have been introduced. Most have failed and continue to fail, even in some of the most progressive states across the country. As a physician, I see assisted suicide as an unnecessary policy that harms rather than helps patients.
Due to a lobbying effort from an organization funded in large part by an out-of-state organization, Nevada legislators are being asked to consider the complex issue of assisted suicide, sometimes referred to as “aid in dying.” Regardless of the term used – physician aid in dying, end of life choices, assisted suicide – the proposed law being debated in Nevada results in allowing a doctor to prescribe a lethal overdose to a requesting patient; the patient takes those drugs with the intention of killing themselves, which is the very definition of suicide.