Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Incurably ill patients should be able to commit physician-assisted suicide because tremendous amounts of financial and mental strife can be avoided at the end of a patients’ life. The right to die should be a fundamental freedom for every person, and patients can die with dignity as opposed to being reduced to a shell of their former selves. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

ORDER  HERE A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

Justification of assisted suicide can be attributed to several factors. In many instances, assisted suicide is done for medically incapacitated patients whose chances of survival are almost zero. Such are patients whose only link between life and death is the life support machine without which they will be dead. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Even with these life support machines, doctors are almost sure that if the machines are switched off, the patients cannot survive and the chances of recovery are none. Such machines often come with immeasurable cost, which cost the families a fortune. This causes terrible financial scuffle to the families and they may end up losing a lot of money even when the patient dies afterwards (Potter 56). For reasons like these, assisted suicide is not only seen as relieve to the patient but also avoids such financial mishaps. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Dying patients sometimes lose all ability to take care of themselves. Vomit, drool, urine, feces, and other indignities must be attended to by nursing assistants. Virtually all people want others’ last memory of them to be how they once were, not what they ended up being. People should be allowed to die with their dignity, pride, and self-worth intact.”This right to physician aid in dying quintessentially involves the inviolable right to human dignity—our most fragile right,” Montana Supreme Court Justice James Nelson argued in his opinion in the 2009 case Baxter v. Montana (InfoBase Learning par. 4). Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

“Society does not have the right to strip a mentally competent, incurably ill individual of her inviolable human dignity when she seeks aid in dying from her physician,”Nelson rules. The end stages of life for terminally ill and suffering patients are often filled with bewildering side effects, a lack of autonomy, and the dreadful knowledge of inevitable death. Furthermore, human beings rightfully deserve their individual right to preserve their own human dignity at a time when they are mentally competent, incurably ill, and faced with death from their illness within a relatively short period of time. In the article “Helping your son to die” author Kiran Somani of the British Medical Journal talks with Heather Pratten, a mother who had recently been charged with assisting in her terminally ill son, Nigel’s, death. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Huntington’s disease had totally robbed him of his “personhood” and furthermore, his dignity (Potter). Pratten describes how her 42 year old son “began to choke every time he ate, his legs had began to give way, his back to ache, and how he was losing his ability to concentrate.” Pratten says how her once fun loving son “shut himself from all of his friends, he shut himself away from everyone,” due to his disease. Nigel was loosing touch with his true self.

Not only did Heather Pratten have to cope with her son’s death; she also had to deal with assisting in his suicide. She was being challenged both legally and personally.A national newspaper reported that Nigel swallowed a lethal amount of heroin and lay in his mother’s arms until he unconscious. When she was sure her son could no longer be resuscitated, Heather then called an ambulance. If Nigel had of had the option of taking a simple prescription from the pharmacy, the true definition of his independence as well as his dignity could’ve been preserved until his last days and he wouldn’t have been reduced to a shell of a man. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Nowhere in the constitution does it state or imply that the government has the right to keep a person from committing suicide. After all, if the patient and the family agree it’s what they want to do, whose business is it anyway? Who else is it going to hurt? In a country that’s supposedly free, this is a fundamental right.For example, the Supreme Court’s primary instinct on the “right to die” movement involves the case Quillin v. State of Oregon (Mikula and MphoMabunda 76). The Supreme Court ruled that one has the “right to die by refusing medical treatment and artificial life support in order to die with dignity and grace,” according to the article “A History of the Right to Die”. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

This case implies that the court is sympathetic palliative stages of citizens, and allows them to handle their families personal, end of life care in a graceful, merciful manner.However, one of the most popular “Right to Suicide” cases is that of Estelle Browning, an 89 year old woman who had lost all consciousness and was being sustained with a feeding tube. In Browning’s living will, she plainly stated that she did not want to be kept alive by artificial means, but in order to prevent homicide charges, the hospital sustained life support against Browning’s wishes (“Right to Suicide”). A year after Browning’s death, the Florida Supreme court ruled that “the execution of a living will allows caregivers to withhold food and water, as well as artificial life support from a person even when death is not imminent” (Potter 76).

In other words, The Supreme Court recognized the right to assisted suicide “even when death is not imminent.” The popular case Roe v. Wade is a perfect example of humans excising their right to choose life or a merciful death (National Abortion Rights Action League 34). The case focuses on “the right to choose” life or death for aborting mothers conflicting with their constitutional right to privacy. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

The case ruled that stripping a human being of their fundamental “right to choose” violates the constitutionally protected right to privacy, not only for mothers, but for any human being (National Abortion Rights Action League 86). Whatever medical decisions a patient chooses to make concerning their bodily integrity, identity and destiny, are their own private decisions, largely beyond the reach of government interference. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

It is however eminent from another perspective that assisted suicide is contrast to moral responsibility. Many religious beliefs propose that life is sacred and only The Supreme Being has the right to take it. From this point of view, religion strongly opposes any form of life taking for whatever reasons. At some point, the argument proposed by such doctrines greatly influences the decision that has to be made in case of assisted suicide or euthanasia.

The perception that such violates the purpose for what creation was made for has continued to raise heated debates among different religious beliefs. The belief that a Supreme Being has control beyond every human kind and the belief that The Supreme being understands reasons why thing have to happen, and they way they do, makes among believers of different faith scared of doing contrary to the Supreme being. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

In conclusion, assisted suicide in its controversies has over the time been done for what humans believe is for the good of the person. Some unbearable medical conditions have prompted medical practitioners to carry out assisted suicide. Whether this is good or bad remains a topic whose discussion has never ending argument. It cannot be ultimately ruled out but the moral implications cannot be justified without question.

Physician Assisted Suicide dates back to the 5th Century B.C. (euthanasia.procon.org). There are many types of people that support it and there are many people that disagree with it. The choice to end a patient’s life with the help of a doctor (Physician Assisted Suicide) should stay a personal matter and the government should not get involved. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay
Physician Assisted Suicide is when a doctor gives a terminally ill patient a lethal drug that kills them peacefully. First of all, the process takes anywhere from thirty-five minutes to forty-eight hours, depending on what condition the patients are in or how big they are. The procedure is a very short process. There are many different ways to have an assisted death; prescription lethal drugs, injections, withholding food and drink from a person, gases and the “peaceful” pill. The main way people assist their own deaths is by injections. The process starts by the person falling into a coma, and then getting a muscle relaxer to relax them and then they get injected with a medicine to stop their heart (life.org). There are many other actions of dying that are legal in many states, but Physician Assisted Suicide is illegal. The death penalty is one example of this. People are being forced to die when they don’t want to but people that want to die are denied it. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay
The Government should not get involved for many reasons. First of all, the right to end your life is a personal freedom in which the government can not take away. Forcing citizens to suffer from incurable diseases as they waste away is cruel and it takes their freedoms away (Ferguson, 37). There are also many medical reasons that prove that the government should not get involved. They are private medical matters that should be protected and stay private. Also, prolonging a patient’s life against his or her wishes wastes resources that the patient may not want to take away from other patients (Ferguson 40). Lastly, the 14th Amendment proves that the government should not get involved. The Amendment states “[that no state can] deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law”. It does not grant the government power to extend the life of a person that doesn’t want to continue living. A person does not have to use the right to life any more than a person must use his right to free speech (Ferguson 37). Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay
The family’s point of view is also very important containing this matter. If the person does not want to continue living, then the family doesn’t have to bear the financial burden of extending medical treatments that do little but prolong suffering. They also do not have to deal with the emotional trauma of watching a loved one waste away (Ferguson 37). Hospitals are also affected by the governments decisions to make assisted suicide illegal. People/Nurses have to watch them around the clock when they could be helping someone else that actually wants help. Instead of using the supplies on the people that don’t want to live, use the medical treatments and medicine for the people that do want to live (Ferguson 40).
There is also an opposing side on this matter. The government has many reasons for keeping Physician Assisted Suicide illegal. First of all, the government believes that when a doctor helps end the life of one of their patients they are violating their hippocratic oath (Balancedpolitics.org). The hippocratic oath states that they will not harm anyone or give anyone a deadly medicine if they ask (wikipedia.org). The government also believes this because doctors can be unethical or wrong because they have too much power (balancedpolitics.org). Lastly, the government believes they should get involved because many religions are against ending life intentionally or because miracles or recoveries can occur (balancedpolitics.org). The death with dignity legislation is a law that certain states have come up with that allows terminally-ill patients to end their lives by taking lethal medications prescribed by their doctors (public.health.oregon.gov). Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay
In conclusion, there are two viewpoints on Physician Assisted Suicide; one that thinks it should be legal and one that thinks it should be illegal. The claim that the choice to end your life with the help of your doctor (Physician Assisted Suicide) should stay a personal matter and the government should not get involved has been proven. It has been proven because the right to end your life is a personal freedom and should stay that way according to the fourteenth amendment. It also has been proven because it is harder on the families, friends and society to make people that don’t want to live, live. To sum up, Physician Assisted Suicide should be legal with certain laws keeping it under control. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia

Remarkably, few have noticed that frail, elderly and terminally ill people oppose assisted suicide more than other Americans. The assisted-suicide agenda is moving forward chiefly with vocal support from the young, the able-bodied and the affluent, who may even think that their parents and grandparents share their enthusiasm. They are wrong.

Thus the assisted suicide agenda appears as a victory not for freedom, but for discrimination. At its heart lie demeaning attitudes and prejudices about the value of life with an illness or disability. All who believe in the dignity of human beings should reject such attitudes. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

When people raise their voices against this injustice, let no one…show more content…
They join efforts against assisted suicide in state and federal legislatures, and work to educate to the dire threat posed by this agenda. Also they join wherever possible with other religious, medical, disability rights, and public interest groups to call our nation to true compassion for the seriously ill — a compassion based on respect for their lives. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

In 1973, the highest court in our land made a tragic error by declaring a constitutional “right” to take the life of unborn children. That decision, too, was defended as a victory for freedom. In reality it has led to 40 million deaths, physical and emotional suffering for countless women, and a coarsening of our society’s attitudes toward human life. It has led to the legalized killing of children even in the very process of being born. The degradation of human life it has produced must not be allowed to expand through assisted suicide.

No court, no legislature, no human being has the right to say that any human life is worthless, or that any human being is of less value than another. We pray that our Supreme Court and all our fellow Americans will realize this truth, and take the path that leads to life. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

The right to assisted suicide is a significant topic that concerns people all over the United States. The debates go back and forth about whether a dying patient has the right to die with the assistance of a physician. Some are against it because of religious and moral reasons. Others are for it because of their compassion and respect for the dying. Physicians are also divided on the issue. They differ where they place the line that separates relief from dying–and killing. For many the main concern with assisted suicide lies with the competence of the terminally ill. Many terminally ill patients who are in the final stages of their lives have requested doctors to aid them in exercising active euthanasia. It is sad to realize that these people are in great agony and that to them the only hope of bringing that agony to a halt is through assisted suicide.When people see the word euthanasia, they see the meaning of the word in two different lights. Euthanasia for some carries a negative connotation; it is the same as murder. For others, however, euthanasia is the act of putting someone to death painlessly, or allowing a person suffering from an incurable and painful disease or condition to die by withholding extreme medical measures. But after studying both sides of the issue, a compassionate individual must conclude that competent terminal patients should be given the right to assisted suicide in order to end their suffering, reduce the damaging financial effects of hospital care on their families, and preserve the individual right of people to determine their own fate. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

ORDER   HERE  NOW

Medical technology today has achieved remarkable feats in prolonging the lives of human beings. Respirators can support a patient’s failing lungs and medicines can sustain that patient’s physiological processes. For those patients who have a realistic chance of surviving an illness or accident, medical technology is science’s greatest gift to mankind. For the terminally ill, however, it is just a means of prolonging suffering. Medicine is supposed to alleviate the suffering that a patient undergoes.Yet the only thing that medical technology does for a dying patient is give that patient more pain and agony day after day. Some terminal patients in the past have gone to their doctors and asked for a final medication that would take all the pain away— lethal drugs. For example, as Ronald Dworkin recounts, Lillian Boyes, an English woman who was suffering from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis, begged her doctor to assist her to die because she could no longer stand the pain (184). Another example is Dr. Ali Khalili, Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s twentieth patient. According to Kevorkian’s attorney, “[Dr. Khalili] was a pain specialist; he could get any kind of pain medication, but he came to Dr. Kevorkian. There are times when pain medication does not suffice”(qtd. in Cotton 363). Terminally ill patients should have the right to assisted suicide because it is the best means for them to end the pain caused by an illness which no drug can cure. A competent terminal patient must have the option of assisted suicide because it is in the best interest of that person. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Further, a dying person’s physical suffering can be most unbearable to that person’s immediate family. Medical technology has failed to save a loved-one. But, successful or not, medicine has a high price attached to it. The cost is sometimes too much for the terminally ill’s family. A competent dying person has some knowledge of this, and with every day that he or she is kept alive, the hospital costs skyrocket. “The cost of maintaining [a dying person]. . . has been estimated as ranging from about two thousand to ten thousand dollars a month” (Dworkin 187). Human life is expensive, and in the hospital there are only a few affluent terminal patients who can afford to prolong what life is left in them. As for the not-so-affluent patients, the cost of their lives is left to their families. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay Of course, most families do not consider the cost while the terminally ill loved-one is still alive.When that loved-one passes away, however, the family has to struggle with a huge hospital bill and are often subject to financial ruin.Most terminal patients want their death to be a peaceful one and with as much consolation as possible. Ronald Dworkin, author of Life’s Dominion, says that “many people . . . want to save their relatives the expense of keeping them pointlessly alive . . .”(193). To leave the family in financial ruin is by no means a form of consolation. Those terminally ill patients who have accepted their imminent death cannot prevent their families from plunging into financial debt because they do not have the option of halting the medical bills from piling up. If terminal patients have the option of assisted suicide, they can ease their families’ financial burdens as well as their suffering. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Finally, many terminal patients want the right to assisted suicide because it is a means to endure their end without the unnecessary suffering and cost. Most, also, believe that the right to assisted suicide is an inherent right which does not have to be given to the individual. It is a liberty which cannot be denied because those who are dying might want to use this liberty as a way to pursue their happiness. Dr. Kevorkian’s attorney, Geoffrey N. Fieger, voices the absurdity of curbing the right to assisted suicide, saying that “a law which does not make anybody do anything, that gives people the right to decide, and prevents the state from prosecuting you for exercising your freedom not to suffer, violates somebody else’s constitutional rights is insane” (qtd. in Cotton 364). Terminally ill patients should be allowed to die with dignity. Choosing the right to assisted suicide would be a final exercise of autonomy for the dying. They will not be seen as people who are waiting to die but as human beings making one final active choice in their lives. As Dworkin puts it, “whatever view we take about [euthanasia], we want the right to decide for ourselves . . .”(239). Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

On the other side of the issue, however, people who are against assisted suicide do not believe that the terminally ill have the right to end their suffering. They hold that it is against the Hippocratic Oath for doctors to participate in active euthanasia. Perhaps most of those who hold this argument do not know that, for example, in Canada only a “few medical schools use the Hippocratic Oath” because it is inconsistent with its premises (Barnard 28). The oath makes the physician promise to relieve pain and not to administer deadly medicine.This oath cannot be applied to cancer patients. For treatment, cancer patients are given chemotherapy, a form of radioactive medicine that is poisonous to the body. As a result of chemotherapy, the body suffers incredible pain, hair loss, vomiting, and other extremely unpleasant side effects. Thus, chemotherapy can be considered “deadly medicine” because of its effects on the human body, and this inconsistency is the reason why the Hippocratic Oath cannot be used to deny the right to assisted suicide. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay Furthermore, to administer numerous drugs to a terminal patient and place him or her on medical equipment does not help anything except the disease itself. Respirators and high dosages of drugs cannot save the terminal patient from the victory of a disease or an illness. Dr. Christaan Barnard, author of Good Life/Good Death, quotes his colleague, Dr. Robert Twycross, who said, “To use such measures in the terminally ill, with no expectancy of a return to health, is generally inappropriate and is—therefore—bad medicine by definition” (22). Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

Still other people argue that if the right to assisted suicide is given, the doctor-patient relationship would encourage distrust. The antithesis of this claim is true. Cheryl Smith, in her article advocating active euthanasia (or assisted suicide), says that “patients who are able to discuss sensitive issues such as this are more likely to trust their physicians” (409). A terminal patient consenting to assisted suicide knows that a doctor’s job is to relieve pain, and giving consent to that doctor shows great trust. Other opponents of assisted suicide insist that there are potential abuses that can arise from legalizing assisted suicide.They claim that terminal patients might be forced to choose assisted suicide because of their financial situation.This view is to be respected. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay However, the choice of assisted suicide is in the patient’s best interest, and this interest can include the financial situation of a patient’s relatives. Competent terminal patients can easily see the sorrow and grief that their families undergo while they wait for death to take their dying loved ones away. The choice of assisted suicide would allow these terminally ill patients to end the sorrow and griefof their families as well as their own misery. The choice would also put a halt to the financial worries of these families. It is in the patient’s interest that the families that they leave will be subject to the smallest amount of grief and worry possible.This is not a mere “duty to die.” It is a caring way for the dying to say, “Yes, I am going to die. It is all right, please do not worry anymore.” Further, legalization of assisted suicide will also help to regulate the practice of it. “Legalization, with medical record documentation and reporting requirements, will enable authorities to regulate the practice and guard against abuses, while punishing real offenders”(Smith 409). Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

There are still some, however, who argue that the right to assisted suicide is not a right that can be given to anyone at all. This claim is countered by a judge by the name of Stephen Reinhardt. According to an article in the Houston Chronicle, Judge Reinhardt ruled on this issue by saying that “a competent, terminally-ill adult, having lived nearly the full measure of his life, has a strong liberty interest in choosing a dignified and humane death rather than being reduced at the end of his existence to a childlike state of helplessness, diapered, sedated, incompetent” ( qtd. in Beck 36). This ruling is the strongest defense for the right to assisted suicide. It is an inherent right. No man or woman should ever suffer because he or she is denied the right. The terminally ill also have rights like normal, healthy citizens do and they cannot be denied the right not to suffer. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay

The right to assisted suicide must be freely bestowed upon those who are terminally ill. This right would allow them to leave this earth with dignity, save their families from financial ruin, and relieve them of insufferable pain. To give competent, terminally-ill adults this necessary right is to give them the autonomy to close the book on a life well-lived. Physician-Assisted Suicide Essay