That article joins an already rich literature on medical practices and attitudes in various countries regarding physician-assisted suicide. The Ethics Committee and the CFPC hope you find this new statement regarding assisted suicide and active euthanasia helpful. We welcome your comments on it. Patients and families are due effective, comprehensive, and competent palliative care. Such care strives to meet physical, psychological, social, and spiritual expectations and needs of those living with illness.
Patients have the right to participate in decisions about their care.
This includes the right to appropriate medical care as well as the right to forgo life-sustaining measures. A decision to withhold or withdraw certain treatments might result in the earlier death of a patient, but this consequence is ethically acceptable and legally permissible if carefully and thoughtfully made. It is sometimes claimed that treatment aimed at alleviating suffering might occasionally hasten a patient s death. 4 This concern, especially pertaining to opioids, has been overstated. The reality is that the suffering of many dying patients is undertreated.