But it is a judgment that the physician makes. Unfortunately, what we are trying to do is modify the Christian religion. The Detroit News editorial page this past week interviewed Derek Humphry, founder and executive director of the Hemlock Society who was in town to raise money for the petition drive, and Dr. Ron Bishop, vice-chair and a founder of Merian's Friends and professor emeritus of internal medicine at the University of Michigan.
Doctors do a marvelous job.
But there are some cases where there is nothing else the doctor can do. Also, there's a human dimension. Some of us can take a lot of pain and distress or indignity. Some of us are more sensitive and have a low threshold of pain. Probably only 3 to 4 percent of the dying will, in the end, take advantage of physician-assisted suicide.