Some opinion polls show support for assisted suicide when it is presented as the only relief for a dying patient in unbearable pain. But when Americans are offered an alternative, they overwhelmingly say that society should concentrate on ensuring pain control and compassionate care for such patients not on helping them take their lives. This preference is even stronger among dying patients themselves. Indeed, oncology patients in pain may be suspicious that if euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide are legalized, the medical care system may not focus sufficient resources on provision of pain relief and palliative care. Realizing that assisted suicide is less popular than improved palliative care, euthanasia advocates have resorted to the claim that there is really not much difference between the two.
Doctors commonly practice euthanasia now, under the guise of pain control.
Sometimes they even sedate these patients into unconsciousness so they can starve them to death. This terminal sedation' is really slow euthanasia. It would be far more candid, as well as more humane, to practice euthanasia openly. This argument has appeared in newspaper opinion pieces, medical journals, and briefs to the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1996 it was even endorsed to some extent by two federal appeals courts that sought to give constitutional protection to physician-assisted suicide.