Death by Prescription.

     It's finally here.  At last doctors can regard killing patients as a legitimate part of their duties.  For thousands of years, physicians regarded the preservation of human life as their most sacred duty, with relief from pain and  suffering as a close second.    The battle to prevent death and destruction, pain and suffering  was the reason that many of the brightest and most dedicated went into  medicine and not,say, engineering.  The science of medicine was always fascinating and intellectually stimulating, but there was a lot more to it than that.  A doctor was part scientist, part philosopher and part priest.  Now, don't go getting your knickers in a twist over that last role.   The confessional was the first psychiatric out-patient clinic and probably did as much to relieve human pain and suffering.
      As soon  as dispensing death becomes a part of the  role of a physician, before a single  death is dispensed, a revolutionary change will  have taken place in the aeons of medical tradition.  There are going to be two very major changes.  The first, will be in physicians themselves.  There is now a new, hitherto prohibited treatment, that can be dispensed when all else has failed.  Incurable  diseases, that caused terrible pain  and  suffering can now be alleviated by a death prescription.  So all of those patients condemned to that fate can be relieved of their  pain  and suffering.  But what if a cure turns up?   Medicine is full of such stories. A hundred years ago that could  have included a myriad of incurable diseases,  tuberculosis, syphilis, and a huge encyclopedia of infectious diseases.    Suddenly, some physician, committed to saving lives, by brilliance or  serendipity, stumbled upon a cure.  Penicillin cured incurable diseases by the million,  streptomycin did the same for tuberculosis and an endless parade of miracle antibiotics made the incurable suddenly curable.   All those incurable tuberculosis patients housed  in sanatoria throughout Ireland during my youth, wasting away and waiting death were suddenly and miraculously curable.  Good job we  didn't have the death option then!
Next week, I will tell you of an unofficial piece of research on patients'  death decisions that never saw the light of day. This one might surprise you!