A MODEL STATE ACT TO AUTHORIZE AND REGULATE PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE

Despite laws in many states prohibiting assisted suicide, an unknown b ut significant number of people people each year commit suicide with t he aid of a physician. In recent years, the phenomenon of physician-as sisted suicide has attracted greater attention as physicians have open ly risked prosecution to shed light on the subject, advocates have rai sed a series of legal challenges to laws banning assisted suicide, and a federal judge has struck down the nation's first statute allowing p hysicians to assist patients in suicide. In this Article, nine authors from the fields of law, medicine, philosophy, and economics propose a comprehensive statute to permit and regulate physician-assisted suici de for patients suffering from terminal illnesses or unbearable pain. The proposed statute provides a specific series of procedural requirem ents designed to prevent mistaken decisions and affords limited legal protection to physicians who follow its requirements.