Lethal Choice
A Medical Thriller by Stanley A. Terman, Ph.D., M.D.
What if the CEOs of health and long-term care insurance companies, whose bonuses depend upon increasing profits, reached their last resort to decrease costs and now must encourage patients to hasten dying? What if they found a research physician who craved fame and fortune for his two contributions? A computer program that allows totally paralyzed patients to commit suicide, and a trio of prescription medications that are lethal when combined, but individually can slip under the radar of the Drug Enforcement Agency. To produce a video documentary to influence patients and doctors to hasten dying, only one component would then be missing: their star. This patient would deliver an eloquent, passionate, and persuasive speech just before he voluntarily demonstrates that Physician-Assisted Suicide is peaceful and patriotic. A long search leads to a decorated war hero who is nearly quadriplegic from end-stage Lou Gehrig's disease.
His mind is clear and his rhetoric is charismatic, but there is one potential obstacle: his undying devotion to his feisty daughter.
The doctor's plan is to psychologically manipulate the patient into believing it is his own idea to volunteer for Physician- Assisted Suicide. His assistant, an evil male nurse well versed in more brutal methods of persuasion, wants instead to threaten the patient's daughter. She is dating a young doctor who becomes her only hope...
The couple's desperate attempts to save their own lives as well as the patient's lead them into a maze of end-of-life ethics and physician bias. To emerge, they must learn how a father's love can transcend even death itself.
Lethal Choice
Stanley A. Terman, Ph.D., M.D.
310 pages
US $19.95
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