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My job as a physician is to make sure I have provided my patients with the best options to make the decisions that affect their lives.

The physician's duty is not to stave off death or return patients to their old lives, but to take into our arms a patient and family whose lives have disintegrated and work until they can stand back up and face - and make sense of - their own existence.

When death is imminent and dying patients find their suffering unbearable, then the physician's role should shift from healing to relieving suffering in accord with the patient's wishes.

Doctors have an ethical duty to follow the practices and standards of care.

I would welcome processes that eliminate the need for doctors. We bottle-neck things around doctors, and it's not a good way of doing things.

Illness and death are not optional. Patients have a right to determine how they approach them.

There is survival behavior, and doctors need to learn from patients who do not die when they are supposed to, instead of saying, 'You're doing very well, so keep doing whatever you are doing.' They should be asking what their patient is doing and pass the information to other patients.

As a medical doctor, it is my duty to evaluate the situation with as much data as I can gather and as much expertise as I have and as much experience as I have to determine whether or not the wish of the patient is medically justified.

My intent was to carry out my duty as a doctor, to end their suffering. Unfortunately, that entailed, in their cases, ending of the life.

I suppose, if helping a patient die is killing, I suppose I'm a killer.