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The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying

admin2013-06-02  72
问题     The Supreme Court’s decisions on physician-assisted suicide carry important implications for how medicine seeks to relieve dying patients of pain and suffering.
    Although it ruled that there is no constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, the Court in effect supported the medical principle of "double effect", a centuries-olii moral principle holding that an action having two effects—a good one that is intended and a harmful one that is foreseen—is permissible if the actor intends only the good effect.
    trol terminally ill patients’ pain, even though increasing dosages will eventually kill the patient.
    Professor George Ann as maintains that, as long as a doctor prescribes a drug for a legitimate medical purpose, the doctor has done nothing illegal even if the patient uses the drug to hasten death. "It’s like surgery," he says. "We don’t call those deaths homicides because the doctors didn’t intend to kill their patients, although they risked their death. If you’re a physician, you can risk your patient’s death as long as you don’t intend their suicide."
    Just three weeks before the Court’s ruling on physician-assisted suicide, the National Academy of Science (NAS) released a two-volume report, Approaching Death: Improving Care at the End of Life. It identifies the under-treatment of pain and aggressive use of "ineffectual and forced medical procedures that may prolong and even dishonor the period of dying" as the twin problems of end-of-life care.
    The profession is taking steps to require young doctors to train in hospices, to test knowledge of aggressive pain management therapies, to develop a Medicare billing code for hospital-based care, and to develop new standards for assessing and treating pain at the end of life.
    Ann as says lawyers can play a key role in insisting that these well-meaning medical initiatives translate into better care. "Large numbers of physicians seem unconcerned with the pain their patients are needlessly and predictably suffering," to the extent that it constitutes "systematic patient abuse." He says medical licensing boards "must make it clear...that painful deaths are presumptively (据推定) ones that are incompetently managed and should result in license suspension."
Which of the following statements is true according to the text?
选项 A、Doctors will be held guilty if they risk their patients’ death.
B、Modem medicine has assisted terminally ill patients in painless recovery.
C、The Court ruled that high-dosage pain-relieving medication can be prescribed.
D、A doctor’s medication is no longer justified by his intentions.
答案C
解析 见第二、三、四段．A“医生如果拿病人的生命冒险就会被认为是有罪”与第四段末句的说法不符；B“现代医药以能帮助垂危病人在康复中免除痛苦”随意添加原文中没有的信心；C“最高法院规定医生可以开大剂量减轻痛苦的药物”与第二、三段的说法不符：D“医生的药物治疗不再因其意图而变得合理”与第四段第一句的说法不符。第二段中说最高法院支持“双重效应”的医疗原则，即只要医生的意图是好的，即使会产生不好的结果，医生的行为也是合理的，第三段又具体提到，近年来，医生是用该原则来证明自己开出大剂量吗啡以减轻病人癌苦的合理性，故选C。
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