of assisted suicide, also physician assisted suicide or PAS, the situation in which a physician gives a patient either means or knowledge to commit suicide but does not perform the act. Palliative treatment is the name given to the act of providing increasing drug dosages for pain relief that may have the so-called "double effect" of ending the patient's life.
The AMA distinguishes between these definitions and a situation in which doctor, patient, or "patient's proxy" in the form of living will, durable power of attorney, or other advanced health-care directive, authorizes withdrawal or withholding of life-support treatments whose disadvantages outweigh the advantages. The AMA assigns no term to such a situation, although since the Quinlan case it has been commonly referred to as passive euthanasia.
The term right to die is connected to that of assisted suicide, interpreted differently by different commentators and sometimes differently by the same commentator:
The phrase . . . can mean (1) "a right to be allowed to die," which would be a right of no
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