Assisted Suicide: An Analysis

Now that I’ve demonstrated that my ethical theory can be used to make educated decisions in situations that we can potentially face daily, how does my ethical theory fit with issues of life or death? My ethical theory focuses more on issues that an individual will face in their everyday life. It does not directly deal with issues of life and death; however you can still go through the core concepts to make a decision. For instance, let's take a look at assisted suicide.

The thoughts of assisted suicide are very mixed. Some people believe that it is a great way to put terminally-ill patients out of the their pain and suffering. They see it as a way for a person to die with dignity after suffering from a painful disease. Others think it is beyond morally wrong for a doctor to intentionally end a patient’s life. They feel that a doctor should not have unnecessary deaths riding, on their shoulders the rest of their career. Assisted suicide goes way beyond the beliefs of medicine and is morally wrong in so many ways.

A. Doctor assisted suicide, also known as euthanasia, “is where a medical doctor helps a patient to die by prescribing a legal overdose,” (Definitions of Euthanasia - Assisted Suicide, 2017, N/A). Currently in Texas the policy in place dealing with doctor assisted suicide according to the Texas Legislature in Texas Laws on Assisted Suicide

Oregon, the first state to legalize PAS in 1997, passed the Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) which allowed patients to end their life by taking a lethal dose of a medication prescribed by a physician. In the article, “The Case for Physician Assisted Suicide: How Can It Possiblye Be Proven?,” the authors, E. Dahl and N. Levy, state that the proponents of PAS believe that there have been several reports of terminally ill patients abusing the DWDA which can be caused by mental illnesses or depression. Due to the possibility of physicians abusing the right to prescribe terminally ill patients lethal doses of a medication, many doubt whether physicians should play a large role in the process of PAS. In the article, “Should Psychiatrists Serve as

On 11/19/16 at 1156 hrs, I was dispatched to Carrollwood 4068 78th Ave Apt 5, Pinellas Park 33781. Reference the complainant’s daughter receiving text messages from her daughter’s boyfriend stating they were going to committed suicide.

An ongoing national concern is assisted suicide. Should it be legal or illegal? Assisted suicide is defined as the death of a patient due to suffering caused by an incurable disease. They end their life by taking lethal amounts of drugs provided by a doctor. (Oxford University Press 2015).In America, people have rights, but does the government have the authority to decide personal choices for them? This is a very realistic topic discussed among the nation’s citizens. The following are considered extreme viewpoints of this topic: humanistic, capitalistic, conservative, and liberal. There are currently only five states that practice the death with dignity law, those being Oregon, Washington, Vermont, New Mexico, and Montana. Some are legalized

Physician-assisted suicide, the practice that allows physicians to prescribe medications to terminally ill people, is illegal in forty five states and DC. Oregon, in contrast, is one of the five states that have legalized this procedure. One of the most recent and publicized cases of euthanasia happened there, in 2014. The patient used to be a California resident which led to a bill that was signed into law by the California governor, just yesterday- October 5, 2015. Assisted-suicide is also permitted in Washington, Vermont and Montana.

The purpose of this research paper is to examine the many different angles of a controversial topic such as physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is when a person kills him or herself and the doctor supplies the means knowing what the intention is. The doctor prescribes a medication to their patient in lethal doses. This allows the patient to choose when they want to die. They can take the pills at home with friends and family present if they wish or they could peacefully go alone. Euthanasia is lethal injection by a physician. PAS is currently illegal in the United States of America with the exception of one state, Oregon. Euthanasia is illegal in the entire United States. Throughout the rest of the

“Death with Dignity” is a phrase referring to the process of assisting terminally ill patients that have no chance of recovery to die earlier than they would have under natural circumstances by having physicians prescribe medication that would hasten the patients’ death. It is often perceived as a move to relieve the ill of the scorching pain and suffering that they could be undergoing. Family members and, in a few occasions, close friends are tasked with deciding when to assist a loved one die in case the patient is incapacitated. However, the patient is often the one to make the decision about whether or not to be kept alive, assuming that they are of sound mind. Death with dignity only happens when a patient with a sound mind makes the decision that he or she should be put out of their misery. One of the commonly used synonyms for death with dignity is assisted suicide, being as though the patient is being assisted to end their life.

There have been many debates over time of if suicide is murder, but what about Assisted Suicide? Assisted suicide is when a person helps another person end their life. Helping with the death of someone who wanted to die. Act Utilitarianism sets basis of right or wrong based on if the action causes more pleasure or pain overall. Every person is accounted as equal. This means if an action brings pleasure to one person but harms two people. The action would be deemed as bad because it brings about more pain. This analysis will attempt to answer the lingering questions about Assisted Suicide by using the theory of Act Utilitarianism.

Assisted suicide is a very controversial subject in the healthcare world and like most things there are a lot of areas that are not written in black and white. Though assisted suicide is only legal in five states it is still practiced all across the United States. In most cases, little to no information is provided to the families and the terminally ill patients on what assisted suicide truly is and what it not. It all has to do with the intent, but most conversations are reduced to a wink or nod and a type of unspoken understanding that prevents healthcare providers from being prosecuted, but in the process leaving the family members confused and with unanswered questions. If the same practices continue, in the future healthcare providers will have to deal with the challenges of sidestepping questions and leaving the families in the dark during one of the most emotional and intense time of their lives.

The “right-to-die” has been controversial for a long time and is continuously in debate. Some of the arguments in favor of laws allowing individuals to choose include - Anyone coming into hospital in an emergency has the option of a DNR (do not resuscitate). People who go into comas may leave living wills instructing doctors not to use any extreme life-saving measures (this includes feeding tubes). Perhaps dying with dignity is controversial b/c it seems like a more conscious choice. People can predetermine that they don’t want to live life as vegetables…but the general public has a hard time reconciling people who are still walking and talking making decisions to die. Why? Because they look healthy? Because they ‘appear’ to have life left in them? That is exactly what is being contested.

According to the article, “Why Assisted Suicide Is Right, For Some,” by John M. Grohol, the evidence of Physician Assisted Suicide in Oregon and Washington State shows the fears of assisted suicide has been based on illogical viewpoints, not statistics. Grohols writing is largely a response to an article by Tom Keane, in that article Keane states, “A diagnosis of a terminal illness can easily leave patients despondent and considering taking their lives; the new law legitimizes that contemplation,” however, Grohol argues that the new law in fact acknowledges that terminal illness is a death sentence, and even though the length of life will vary from person to person, it doesn’t negate the basic fact death is coming sooner than expected with

The new topic that we discussed in class was about assisted suicide and death hastening. This new source that I found talks about if someone can hasten their death as they wished if they have dementia and I found this article to be really interesting. The article starts out by saying how it can be simple to hasten your own death. All you have to do is not eat or drink for a week. The article mentions the case of Margaret Bentley. Bentley had decided years ago that she wanted to stop eating if she became disabled. Her dementia had gotten a lot worse and she needed other people to help her. Her family would allow her to die and they respected her wishes, but the administrators of her nursing home did not. She even wrote and signed a living will

I enjoyed reading your review and got a lot out of it. When you said, “Another purpose of literature review is to determine how an issue can be resolved and managed based on research evidence” (Boswell & Cannon, 2011). I have had this happen to me when reviewing literature. I was thinking the literature would show one thing and it wound up showing another. For example when I was reviewing the evidence-based practice of relieving pain for dying patients. I found it was not uncommon or considered doing assisted suicide if you were to medicate a patient on the wishes of the family as to what they thought the patient was feeling when the patient themselves could not express for themselves pain and a lethal dose is given. As stated “he literature