Physician assisted suicide is when a physician assists a person to commit suicide by providing them with the means to kill themselves. This may be by prescribing a lethal dose of oral medications for a person which the patient then takes at some later time. Alternatively the physician may play a more active role by providing a person with a machine that once set in action, automatically delivers a large intravenous dose of a sedative, such as a barbiturate, followed by a drug such as a large dose of potassium, that stops the heart or a paralyzing agent that stops breathing. The first drug puts the person to sleep, the second kills them. The physician is more directly involved in this type of assisted suicide because apart from prescribing lethal drugs, he/she provides the machine and presumably must also set up the intravenous infusion for the person. A physician may also assist suicide by withdrawing food and water from a patient at the patient's request. The law in many countries does not interfere if a person stops taking food and water of their own volition, but if this occurs in a hospital, the physician in charge, by acquiescing, assists in the suicide. able of Contents