This op-ed by Dr. Marcia Angell was published in the Santa Fe New Mexican on Feb. 17, 2019.
“The Elizabeth Whitefield End of Life Options Act would provide dying patients who find their suffering unbearable the choice of hastening an inevitable death. Under certain conditions, their providers would be able to write a prescription for medication that would end their lives peacefully. This is not a question of life versus death. All of these patients would be close to death. The question is simply the manner of an imminent death…”
Dr. Marcia Angell is a semi-retired physician who has lived part-time in Santa Fe for the past five years and plans to live here permanently. Her primary home is in Boston, where she served as editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and taught medical ethics at Harvard Medical School.