Lisker Rubén, Alvarez Del Rio Asunción, Villa Antonio R, Carnevale Alessandra
Dirección de Investigación and Unidad de Epidemiología Clínica, Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, México, D.F., México.
Arch Med Res. 2008 May;39(4):452-8. doi: 10.1016/j.arcmed.2008.01.004.
There is insufficient information on what Mexicans think of physician-assisted death, a problem that is currently being discussed in our legislative bodies. This paper discusses the findings among a sample of physicians.
The sample was formed by 2097 physicians from several specialties employed by a Mexican government health system, distributed throughout the country. Each physician received a structured questionnaire exploring what they thought of two different scenarios related to physician-assisted death: 1) intolerable suffering of patients; and 2) persistent vegetative state (PVS). Questions included data on several personal characteristics of the respondents and two open-ended questions asking the reasons why they answered the main questions as they did.
There was an overall response rate of 47.3%. Approximately 40% agreed with physicians helping terminally ill patients request to die because of intolerable suffering caused by incurable diseases, whereas 44% said no and the rest were undecided. This was statistically different from the answers to the scenario where the relatives of a patient in a PVS ask their physician to help him or her die, where 48% of respondents said yes, and 35% said no. The main reasons to say yes in both scenarios were respect for patients or family autonomy and to avoid suffering, whereas those opposed cited other ethical and mainly religious considerations.
The variable with the highest probability to approve both scenarios was of a legal nature, whereas strong religious beliefs were against accepting physician-assisted death. The group was evenly divided with approximately 40% each between those for and against the idea of helping die a patient and approximately 20% were undecided.
关于墨西哥人对医生协助死亡的看法，目前立法机构正在讨论这一问题，但相关信息不足。本文讨论了一组医生样本的调查结果。
样本由墨西哥政府卫生系统雇佣的2097名来自多个专业的医生组成，分布在全国各地。每位医生都收到一份结构化问卷，探讨他们对与医生协助死亡相关的两种不同情况的看法：1）患者难以忍受的痛苦；2）持续性植物状态（PVS）。问题包括受访者的几个个人特征数据以及两个开放式问题，询问他们如此回答主要问题的原因。
总体回复率为47.3%。约40%的人同意医生帮助绝症患者因无法治愈的疾病所带来的难以忍受的痛苦而请求死亡，而44%的人表示不同意，其余人未作决定。这与持续性植物状态患者的亲属请求医生帮助其死亡这一情况的答案在统计学上存在差异，在该情况中，48%的受访者表示同意，35%的人表示不同意。在两种情况下表示同意的主要原因是尊重患者或家属的自主权以及避免痛苦，而反对者则引用了其他伦理以及主要是宗教方面的考虑因素。
最有可能批准这两种情况的变量具有法律性质，而强烈的宗教信仰反对接受医生协助死亡。该群体意见平分秋色，支持和反对帮助患者死亡这一想法的人各占约40%，约20%的人未作决定。
