According to this article in the Baltimore Sun, Dr. Lawrence D. Egbert, Visiting Assistant Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University, was arrested Wednesday by the Baltimore Police, working together with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and charged with assisted suicide, tampering with evidence, and violation of antiracketeering laws. Another Baltimore native, Nicholas Alec Sheridan, was arrested as well, and authorities say more arrests in connection with this case are likely.

Egbert is said to serve as medical director for the organization Final Exit Network, which bills itself as “an all-volunteer organization dedicated to serving people who are suffering from an intolerable condition. Network volunteers offer you counseling, support, and even guidance to self-deliverance at a time and place of your choosing, but you always do the choosing. We will never encourage you to hasten your death.”

Egbert is alleged to have instructed Final Exit Network Members in how to end their lives, and to have been present at their deaths, as well.

Now, Dr. Egbert is just as entitled as anyone else to the presumption of innocence. I don’t have any inside information as to whether his activities were in violation of the law. But I can’t help wondering why self-styled “progressive” types are so eager to hop on this particular bandwagon. My purpose here is not to debate the morality of suicide per se. For what it’s worth, I believe a person should have the right to end his life, if he decides that his continued existence has no meaning. My problem with the phrase “physician-assisted suicide” is not with the “suicide” part, nor even with the “assisted” part. It’s with the “physician” part.

If we make killing us part of the physician’s job, I am deeply concerned about the kind of people that will attract to the medical profession, and what it will do to those who are already in that profession. To put it bluntly, it’s already too damned easy for physicians and other medical professionals to get away with murder. Dr. Harold Shipman is believed by authorities in the UK to have murdered 218 people. That’s the low-end estimate, by the way – some estimates run as high as 600 or more. There was no other hands-on serial killer in the developed world in the twentieth century who has even come close to Dr. Shipman’s death toll.

There have been others, as well. Dr. Michael Swango is alleged to have murdered at least 30 people. Nurse Orville Lynn Majors is said to have killed 130. And Dr. John Bodkin Adams is believed to have racked up an impressive 163 victims.

Now, before you start kicking over all kinds of straw men, I’m not saying that these folks are representative of the medical and nursing professions. They’re not. What I am saying is that they have demonstrated that it is ridiculously easy for members of their professions to get away with murder.

So do we really want our doctors to get in the habit of killing us? How many people do you know who can stop after just one potato chip?