Here is a link to an excellent essay in Public Discourse by Tom Cavanaugh. The title of the essay is “Why the Hippocratic Oath Prohibits Physician-Assisted Suicide.” Here is a brief excerpt:
“By respecting this venerable boundary [between killing and healing], physicians can resist society’s chronic tendency to conflate the roles of healer and wounder. Moreover, by rejecting PAS, doctors ensure both that death will not become a therapy for grim diseases more generally, and that today’s PAS will not become tomorrow’s euthanasia. This honorable “No” to giving a deadly drug permits many “Yeses” to therapeutic progress and shields vulnerable others. Finally, doctors would do wisely to avoid the temptation to medicalize mortality by answering questions outside their competence….”