Deck 3: Requests to Die: Terminal Patients

Question 1

Which of the following statements is FALSE?

A) Terminal patients are learning that by refusing food and water, they can control their deaths, be free from invasive medical technology, and die relatively well.
B) Leo Alexander's work on Nazi killings predicted Michael Swango's actions.
C) "Oncologists are against Kevorkian and physician-assisted dying for terminal patients because it takes money away from them." This is an example of a direct argument against physician-assisted dying.
D) So many patients die poorly that palliative care has developed as a new medical specialty to change dying.
E) Physician-assisted dying is completely legal in Holland.

Answer 1

"Oncologists are against Kevorkian and physician-assisted dying for terminal patients because it takes money away from them." This is an example of a direct argument against physician-assisted dying.

Question 2

Which of these is TRUE about recent developments in Oregon?

A) At the present time, comatose patients like Karen Quinlan, can be legally given a lethal overdose by a physician in Oregon.
B) A patient need not be judged terminal, with less than six months to live, before he can legally request physician-assisted dying.
C) Far fewer terminal patients in Oregon requested physician-assisted dying than critics predicted before legalization, and of these, only about half or less actually carried it out.
D) Most people in Oregon who resort to physician-assisted dying do so because they do not have medical insurance, and because they worried about the costs of staying alive.
E) Many thousands more people have sought physicians' help in dying than had been predicted. Oregon physicians have been swamped by their demands and this puts the medical system there in acute crisis.

Answer 2

Far fewer terminal patients in Oregon requested physician-assisted dying than critics predicted before legalization, and of these, only about half or less actually carried it out.

Question 3

The policy of the American Medical Association (AMA) on physician-assisted dying and letting die (withdrawing respirators or feeding tubes) CHANGED between 1973 and 1986 in that:

A) Physician-assisted dying is now allowed if a patient consents.
B) Physician-assisted dying is now allowed, but only for adults, not children.
C) Letting a patient die by a physician is no longer considered morally equivalent to physician-assisted dying.
D) No physician may earn income for participating in letting patients die.
E) Letting patients die is forbidden, as is physician-assisted dying.

Answer 3

Letting a patient die by a physician is no longer considered morally equivalent to physician-assisted dying.

Question 4

Which of the following statements is FALSE?

A) Dr. Kevorkian's first patient, Janet Adkins, faced a Catch-22 situation about whether to kill herself before her Alzheimer's disease advanced any more.
B) Kevorkian has compared himself to Ghandi and Martin Luther King.
C) Dr. Kevorkian first became interested in dying patients not to help them find death with dignity, but to increase organs for donation.
D) According to his own account, Dr. Kevorkian as a resident did "research" into dying patients by looking into their eyes as they died, trying to find a verifiable sign of the moment of death.
E) Dr. Kevorkian has NEVER spent time in jail for his actions.

Question 5

Which of the following is TRUE about the Hippocratic Oath?

A) It is a patient-centered ethic or ideal.
B) It represented most ancient Greek physicians.
C) It allows physicians to perform abortions.
D) It allows physicians to perform surgery.
E) It encourages physicians to admit women to medicine.

Question 6

Which of the following is a way for terminal patient to die with minimal medical interventions and maximal control?

A) Hanging themselves.
B) Refusing food.
C) Refusing water.
D) Jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.
E) Taking an overdose of aspirin.

Question 7

The doctrine of double effect has recently been used in palliative care in connection with a practice in that field called:

A) Murder.
B) Mercy-killing.
C) Loving death.
D) Terminal sedation.
E) Death with dignity.

Question 8

Which of the following is NOT an example of a conceptual slippery slope?

A) If we can permit aborting a 26-week old fetus because it tests positive for Down syndrome, why can't we let die a 39-week old baby because it is born with Down Syndrome?
B) If a miserable quality of life should allow a physician to help a competent patient die, why shouldn't a miserable quality of life allow a physician to help an incompetent patient to die?
C) "The real ethics of American physicians remains largely untested. Once physicians no longer make money keeping patients alive but start to make money helping patients die, no nursing home patient in America will be safe."
D) If your motive is to kill a person and the result is death, both in letting die and in killing, and if society permits letting die, why shouldn't society permit killing?
E) Because we have already accepted that some severely retarded elderly patients in mental institutions have lives that are not worth living, shouldn't we also accept the same for institutionalized, severely retarded neonates?

Question 9

A physician during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans has recently been charged, along with her nurse, by the district attorney there with:

A) Criminal negligence.
B) Battery.
C) Assault.
D) Murder.
E) Malpractice.

Question 10

Which of these is FALSE about physician-assisted dying in Holland?

A) Incompetent patients in comas over many years are routinely assisted to die by Dutch physicians.
B) Competent patients with terminal illnesses such as AIDS and cancer are routinely assisted to die by Dutch physicians.
C) Dutch physicians have been helping patients to die for 25 years.
D) Most Dutch people like the current situation and do not want to return to the time when physician-assisted dying was banned.
E) Assisting patients to die is something that an ordinary Dutch physician might be asked to do.

Question 11

The Nazi "euthanasia" program is frequently cited in debates about physician-assisted dying. One misleading aspect of such a citation is that:

A) No Nazi physicians were involved with the program.
B) The Nazi program did NOT begin by killing mentally and physically "defective" people.
C) The Nazi program had NO CONSENT from patients or patient's families.
D) The Nazi program opposed national ideology about "racial purity" and elitism.
E) No institutionalized patients were actually killed in Nazi Germany.