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To the Editor: Dr Chochinov's article1 on dignity-conserving care at the end of life provides a model for how people should treat each other. Its elements, which generally can be found in hospice care, enable most patients to die with dignity.
Unfortunately, this model is not practiced in most hospital or nursing home settings, and is demanding for the average caregiver. Still, if most individuals with a terminal illness were treated this way, the incentive to end their lives would be greatly reduced. Nonetheless, there would still be other reasons arising from suffering, physical deterioration, and personal choice.
Those of us who defend a person's right to choose a peaceful, quick, and certain death, preferably with the help of a physician, do not mean to imply that a hastened death is the only way to achieve dignity at the end of life. But the dignity of all individuals is minimized if they are not allowed to make their own choices. Why not use this compassionate model and provide access to a gentle death if that is still what is wanted by the patient? Why compromise people's dignity by insisting that they must live, when they are ready to die and would prefer to do so?
Country-Specific Mortality and Growth Failure in Infancy and Yound Children and Association With Material Stature
Use interactive graphics and maps to view and sort country-specific infant and early dhildhood mortality and growth failure data and their association with maternal
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