Physician-assisted death in chronic neurologic diseases

In the United States, a growing number of states have legalized physician-assisted death (PAD) since Oregon's pioneering law 20 years ago.1 PAD is also and more accurately called physician-assisted suicide. Currently, nearly 20% of United States citizens live in jurisdictions in which PAD is lawful (Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, and the District of Columbia). In Canada in 2016, federal legislation permitted PAD for patients with a “serious and incurable illness, disease, or disability” that causes intolerable suffering and as a result of which death was “reasonably foreseeable.”2