: This paper considers whether a physician is criminally liable for administering a dose of painkillers that hastens a patient's death. The common wisdom is that a version of the doctrine of double effect legally protects the physician. That is, a physician is supposedly acting lawfully so long as the physician's primary purpose is to relieve suffering. This paper suggests that the criminal liability issue is more complex than that. Physician culpability can be based on recklessness, and recklessness hinges on (...) whether a physician has taken an unjustifiable risk of hastening death. The authors identify three conditions of justifiability. Their analysis helps to explain the distinction between euthanasia, which is legally banned, and the use of risky analgesics, which is permitted in limited circumstances. (shrink)

As we die, our respiratory pattern is altered and we seem to gasp and struggle for each breath. Such gasping is commonly seen as a clear sign of dyspnoea and suffering by families and loved ones, however, it is unclear whether it is perceived at all by the dying person. Narcotics and sedatives do not seem to affect these gasping respirations. In this issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics, we are asked to consider whether the last gasp of a (...) dying patient could be or, perhaps, even should be avoided by administering neuromuscular blockers to palliate dying patients. For many reasons, such as our current failure to alleviate pain and distress, stories of inadequate analgesia and sedation in critically ill paralysed patients and the inability to know the intent—whether to palliate or to euthanise—it would seem that administering neuromuscular blockers should not be ethically permissible. (shrink)