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  3. The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying

The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying

admin2013-06-02  57
问题     The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.
    Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect", a centuries-olii moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.
    trol terminally ill patients’ pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.
    Professor George Ann as maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It’s like surgery," he says. "We don’t call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn’t intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you’re a physician, you can risk your patient’s death as long as you don’t intend their suicide."
    Just three weeks before the Court’s ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the under-treatment of pain and aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.
    The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.
    Ann as says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering," to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse." He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear...that painful deaths are presumptively (据推定) ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension."
From the first three paragraphs, we learn that ______.
选项 A、doctors used to increase drug dosages to control their patients’ pain
B、it is still illegal for doctors to help the dying end their lives
C、the Supreme Court strongly opposes physician-assisted suicide
D、patients have no constitutional right to commit suicide
答案B
解析 见第二段第一句。A“医生们过去常常增加药的剂量来控制他们的病人的痛苦”与第三段的说法不符；B“医生帮助垂危病人结束生命仍然是不合法的”与第三段第一句的说法相符；C“最高法院强烈反对医生协助自杀”与第二段第一句不符：D“宪法没有规定病人有自杀的权力”是对第二段第一句的曲解。第二段第一句的no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide说明目前宪法中还没有关于医生协助自杀的权力规定，故选B。
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