Comment A doctor's opinion: TFA's got it right. (Score 4, Insightful) 646
I'm a board-certified physician (among other things). There is no way that I would allow my colleagues to inflict the kind of death on me that they are forced to inflict on so many. Part of this is certainly that I know full well that we all exit this mortal coil toes-up, and there's no getting around it. Part of this is the personal reluctance to experience the diminished autonomy, indignity, pain,and hopelessness that comes with fanatically-treated terminal illness.
But a big part of it, I think, is just that I know that there are so, so many things that are worse than simply dying. Dying in agony, for one. Dying after having bankrupted my wife or my children. Dying after being reduced to a stinking thing in a bed long enough that only those who loved me most even want to be near me, and that only because they feel they must. Physicians see these things all the time, and we see the road that leads to them. We're not (that) stupid, and we would rather exit early on that road, not at its terminus.
As long as I have the capacity for joy I will strive to remain alive to experience that joy. When the capacity - or the joy - is gone for good, I have given quite strict instructions not only to my family but to some other clear-headed and insistent people who will do their best to ensure that I too will be gone without further "heroic" intervention.
The only problem that I have with the article is that it pretends that everyone should make the same decisions. Everyone has their own decisions to make, and without my knowledge and experience I might not make the same ones. I think as physicians we owe it to the people for whom we care to educate as well as we can and help them to understand why we might personally decide one way or another. But I will never tell them how they "ought" to decide - it's really their choice. Taking that choice away from a person leads too easily to very real outcomes that are much nastier than simply a life that ends later than it ought.