Even if physician-assisted suicide has certain advantages over active voluntary euthanasia (and, in some instances, over passive voluntary euthanasia), it has been a specific target for some opponents of medically assisted death. This chapter will be devoted to consideration of the reasons for their opposition. In subsequent chapters I will consider objections that have been levelled against voluntary medically assisted death more generally.

Among the more important concerns specifically raised about physician-assisted suicide are the following: whether it is appropriate to place potentially lethal doses of barbiturates, opioids, and other medications in the hands of the terminally ill; whether medical practitioners may with propriety agree not to play a supervising role at the time when a patient chooses to take a lethal dose of such drugs; whether physician-assisted suicide is of any use to sufferers from severely disabling conditions like multiple sclerosis or motor neurone disease (who would be unable to suicide in the way envisaged in physician-assisted suicide); whether (as opponents of physician-assisted suicide claim) there are available equally efficacious but less contentious strategies — like the refusal of food and fluids — which would enable competent terminally ill persons to end their lives; whether legalising physician-assisted suicide would pose any serious risks to others, especially those who constitute the more vulnerable members of society; and, whether requests for assistance with dying made in advance of the onset of incompetence by, for example, victims of Alzheimer's disease, may legitimately be honoured through physician-assisted suicide.