CHICAGO (AP)—A prominent medical journal decided to publish a graphic essay, in which a young physician describes injecting a deadly dose of morphine into a terminally ill patient, “to provoke responsible debate” on mercy killing, its editor said Monday.

Dr. George D. Lundberg, editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, defended the decision to publish the essay amid criticism from the public and doctors who say the physician‘ actions were illegal and unethical.

“We’ve received a lot of mail discussing the issues and the majority of the mail is opposed to the action of the physician,” Lundberg said, “although some of the mail commends us for publishing the essay for the purpose of a national discussion of the issue of the termination of life in a hopelessly ill terminal patient with great pain.”

None of the letters have been published, but Lundberg said some would appear in the journal “in the near future.”

In the essay, which appeared in the “A Piece of My Mind” section of the Chicago-based journal’s January 8 edition, a gynecology resident described ending the life of a 20-year-old woman who was dying of ovarian cancer.

The essay titled, “It’s Over, Debbie,” details the doctor’s reaction upon arriving at the patient’s room in the middle of the night. The doctor’s name and gender were not identified.

“It was a gallows scene, a cruel mockery of her youth and unfulfilled potential. Her only words to me were, ‘Let’s get this over with,'” wrote the physician, who described never having seen the patient before the night her life was ended.

The essay says the doctor told the patient and another woman in the room, apparently the patient’s mother, “I was going to give Debbie something that would let her rest and to say good-bye.”

The doctor then injected the morphine.

“I anticipated that there would be substantial controversy produced by the publication. We published the article to provoke responsible debate on this issue at this time,” Lundberg said in a telephone interview.

He said the official AMA position on mercy killing is “in favor of withholding life support in terminally ill hopeless patients when such an action has been approved” by the patient, the doctor, the family and an ethics committee.

“But this essay goes beyond that to actually terminating life by a specific act,” he said.

“Medical ethics in this country officially state that the action described in the essay is wrong. The AMA has a specific position on witholding life support in terminally patients under proper circumstances, but is ethically opposed to actually terminating life.”

Lundberg said the journal’s editorial staff knows the identity of the doctor, but withheld his or her name at the doctor’s request.

He said he did not believe legal authorities had initiated an investigation into the doctor’s actions.

“I am unaware of any investigation of the author at this time,” Lundberg said.

Dr. Mark Siegler, director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at the University of Chicago, called the physician’s action criminal.

“As far as I know such an action is a crime—perhaps even premeditated murder—in every American jurisdiction as well as being a violation of every canon of responsible medical practice and medical ethics,” Siegler said.

“Debbie’s remaining time was snuffed out by an unthinking on-call resident who was conditioned for this action by an intellectual climate of vague notions of ‘death with dignity,'” he said.