KEVIN WM. WILDES, SJ. CONSCIENCE, REFERRAL, AND PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE

ABSTRACT. Practices such as physician assisted suicide, even if legal, engender a range of moral conflicts to which many are oblivious. A recent proposal for physician assisted suicide provides an example by calling upon physicians opposed to suicide to refer patients to other, more sympathetic, physicians. However, the proposal does not address the moral concerns of those physicians for whom such referral would be morally objectionable. Key Words: collaboration, euthanasia, intrinsic evil, material cooperation, projects, referral, toleration The controversies regarding euthanasia and assisted suicide concern not just whether these practices should be legally tolerated, but also how those who regard them as evil can avoid moral involvement if these practices become frequent. Assisted suicide and euthanasia as particular occasions for collaboration in evil raise many questions three of which deserve special note: 1) Can one distinguish kinds of collaboration? 2) Can one avoid collaboration without causing a more serious evil? And 3) does the pressure to collaborate reflect a special intolerance in our society of moral diversity? In a recent article, Timothy Quill, Christine Cassel, and Diane Meier recommend that physicians who oppose assisted suicide transfer patients, who make such requests, to physicians who are "more receptive " (p. 105). These authors, like many, fail to ac-knowledge the nature and depth of the moral opposition to assisted suicide. They write: No physician should be forced to assist a patient in suicide if it violates the physician's fundamental values, although the patient's primary physician should think seriously before turning down such a request. Should a transfer of care be necessary, the personal physician should help the patient find another more receptive physician (p. 1382)