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The debate about assisted suicide arouses such passion on both sides that it is difficult to know what the argument is really about. Some believe that it is wrong for physicians to participate actively in the deaths of their patients, no matter what the degree of the patient's suffering or whether the patient requests assistance. In this view, the classic duty of physicians is to prolong life, so that assisting in the death of a patient contravenes the traditions of the profession. On the other side, it is argued that the physician's duty to relieve suffering reaches back to antiquity
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