Weighing Rights to Choose at the End of Life: Major Points of Consensus and Disagreement

Introduction: This interdisciplinary panel explores the major points of consensus and disagreement in weighing rights to choose palliative and end-of-life options at the end of life. In California and New York, recently enacted laws have opened a new chapter in end-of-life care by emphasizing education about and access to pallitiave care. Overall these new initiatives establish palliative care for patients with terminal illness as a right and require health care practitioners to offer to provide information and counseling to such patients. With leadership from two influential and populous states, these laws are models for the nation, and will have far-reaching effects on palliative and end of life care as important components of public health. In light of these developments, what place does physician aid-in dying have in end-of-life care?

The aim of the panel is take stock of the current legal, social, cultural and ethical issues that continue to drive the debate over the place of physician aid in dying within the domain of palliative and end of life care. Where do proponents of each care philosophy and advocacy approach consensus, and where do they radically depart from each other? Recent legal activity in Georgia will be reviewed in the context of physician aid-in dying laws in other states as well as implications for future policy making and charting a path that balances individualistic and societal interests in well-being.