If a patient wants to die because of pain, compassion obligates the doctor to try to control the pain without unacceptable side affects. Compassion does not authorize the doctor to bypass pain control and go straight to death, as in the case of Mrs. Garrish. Compassion must, by definition, stop short of death. The patient has been abandoned. Furthermore, from a medical standpoint death is an unnecessary solution.
Experience consistently shows that patients often want to die because of undertreated pain.
Yet with good medical care their pain is almost always manageable, and they almost always regain their desire to live. This is the model standard of care. Though some patients have expressed concerns about becoming addicted to pain reducing medication, there is no reason for the dying to fear addiction. For one thing, very few terminally ill patients have the psychological makeup need to become truly addicted. Tragically, this means that many terminal patients experience unnecessary suffering.