Studies show that many who resort to suicide are depressed. Historically, a desire to commit suicide has been treated as the wish of an incompetent person. Today, however, some consider assisted suicide a rational response to physical and mental pain. It is true that many doctors fail to respond to the pain and depression of their dying patients, for which they have no excuse. Current pain management techniques offer physicians a variety of tools to control most forms of pain.
Research continues to provide ever more effective methods.
The hospice movement has demonstrated that pain can be managed without massive doses of narcotics. Appropriately applied modern pain management principles, using both drug and non-drug therapies, will control the pain of 99 percent of patients. Treatments already exist to care for the few whose pain continues. These methods may render the patient unconscious but they are effective and legal. Consequently, it is not simplistic to say that if a person experiences the kind of pain most people believe justifies mercy killing his or her physician is guilty of medical malpractice.