抄録
In 1997, the American Medical Association conducted a large-scale national survey of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. This survey showed that a surprising 6% of the member physicians of the As-sociation had met requests from patients for assistance with suicide or euthanasia at least once. Most of these patients had terminal cancer, and the doctors who had carried out assisted suicide and euthanasia were generally not familiar with palliative care. The problem of physi-cianassisted suicide and euthanasia has become a general trend among developed countries for the past decade. To help solve this problem, palliative care is beginning to be considered in the light of psycho-oncology. Since the late 1980s, many studies have reported that cancer patients' wish to die comes largely from their depression, lack of social support, and pain that is not controlled well. Palliative care specialists think that if palliative care gains substantial popularity, it will make physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia less frequent.
