ArticleBMC medicine2017
Advice and care for patients who die by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking is not assisted suicide.
Article in BMC medicine, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Suicide prevention in the context of ineligibility for voluntary assisted dying: emerging insights.BMC psychiatry · 2026Pooled it
- The Role of the Physician in Caring for Patients Pursuing VSED: Challenging the Conventional Approach.Journal of the American Geriatrics Society · 2025Article
- Review
- Carers' Perspective on Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking: A Systematic Mixed-Methods Review of Motives and Attitudes.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Caring for patients during voluntarily stopping of eating and drinking (VSED): experiences of a palliative care team in Germany.BMC palliative care · 2023Article
- "Discussion or silent accompaniment: a grounded theory study about voluntary stopping of eating and drinking in Switzerland".BMC palliative care · 2022Article
- Family physicians' perspective on voluntary stopping of eating and drinking: a cross-sectional study.The Journal of international medical research · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundA competent patient has the right to refuse foods and fluids even if the patient will die. The exercise of this right, known as voluntarily stopping eating and drinking (VSED), is sometimes proposed as an alternative to physician assisted suicide. However, there is ethical and legal uncertainty about physician involvement in VSED. Are physicians advising of this option, or making patients comfortable while they undertake VSED, assisting suicide? This paper attempts to resolve this ethical and legal uncertainty. DISCUSSION: The standard approach to resolving this conundrum has been to determine whether VSED itself is suicide. Those who claim that VSED is suicide invariably claim that physician involvement in VSED amounts to assisting suicide. Those who claim that VSED is not suicide claim that physician involvement in VSED does not amount to assisting suicide. We reject this standard approach.
conclusionWe instead argue that, even if VSED is classified as a kind of suicide, physician involvement in VSED is not a form of assisted suicide. Physician involvement in VSED does not therefore fall within legal provisions that prohibit VSED.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.