Essay On Physician Assisted Suicide

A controversial human rights issue in modern society is the right to die, an issue that has much to do with the way that human beings relate to society at large, the notion that a man has ownership of their own body, and the obligations set forth in the Hippocratic oath and medical ethics. Physician assisted suicide, or the right to die as those in the pro-assisted suicide movement call it, divides two very different kinds of people into two camps. One’s opinion on the subject is entirely related to one’s core values. Whether one values the individual or whether one places more emphasis on the will of the majority has a great impact on one’s beliefs concerning the issue of the right to die. In this essay, I will prove

In homes across the world, millions of victims are suffering from fatal and terminal illnesses.With death knocking on their door, should these people have to endure pain and misery knowing what is to come? The answers to these questions are very controversial. Furthermore, there is a greater question to be answered—should these people have the right and option to end the relentless pain and agony through physician assisted death? Physician-Assisted Suicide PAS is highly contentious because it induces conflict of several moral and ethical questions such as who is the true director of our lives. Is suicide an individual choice and should the highest priority to humans be alleviating pain or do we suffer for a purpose? Is suicide a purely

Physician assisted suicide was brought to mainstream attention in the 1990’s due to Dr. Kevorkian’s “suicide machine," who claims to have assisted over 100 suicide deaths of terminally ill patients with Alzheimer’s disease (Dickinson, p. 8). In the early 1990’s, for the first time in United States history the issue was brought to the voting polls in California, Washington, and Oregon (Dickinson, p. 9). The bill was passed in Oregon; legally allowing physicians to facilitate death of the terminally ill, but voters fails to pass the bill in Washington and California (Dickinson, p. 9). In 2008 voters in Washington State passed the Washington Death with Dignity Act (Dickinson, p. 277). Today

Every day in the United States 1,500 people are diagnosed with a terminal illness. These people are given few options when determining if the wish to try treatment and if treatment does not work, how to deal with the end of their lives. (author unknown, “Cancer”) With this horrible future ahead of them many may wish to make amends before it’s too late, however, an increasing number of people are seeking an alternate solution. In states such as Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana and soon California a relatively new, legal option is available for people with terminal illnesses. The states of Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and Montana created a law which allows people with a terminal illness and less than six months that are mentally healthy seek professional medical help that will end their lives (Humphrey, Derek) . This topic has created heated debates across the United States with each side have clear and defined reason as to why or why not this controversial law should be processed for the whole country. The people who defend the law believe that people who are losing their lives should be able to leave this world on their own terms, and with the help of physicians they can go in a painless and mess-free way. Supporters also believe that by not wanting to the end it can help save patients, doctors, and insurance time and money that could be better spent on patients who may have options and may not be able to reach them without

Physician-assisted suicide is controversial in healthcare and political realms alike. Currently, this end-of-life option is practiced in five states within the United States. Social concerns regarding assisted suicide revolve around ethical quandaries; providing the means to a patient’s death is contradictory to ethical principles of healthcare providers. Political concerns surrounding the legalization of assisted suicide include disparities in healthcare that may lead to certain populations choosing assisted suicide and the stagnation of current care options. While there is no succinct manner in which to declare assisted suicide right or wrong, each individual must address the social and political concerns surrounding the issue when voting for legislation to legalize assisted suicide or pursuing the option for themselves.

Physician-assisted suicide was first made legal in the state of Oregon. (Hendin) In cases of euthanasia, physicians often give lethal doses of a medication to terminate a patient’s life because they’re experiencing intolerable pain. Patients who wish to use the Death with Dignity law in Oregon must be eighteen or older, must be a resident of Oregon, and they must be able to make their own health care decisions. (Sharp 53) However, the law does not require the patient to be in unmanageable pain, they must just have a prognosis of less than six months to live. (Sharp 54) This law seems to be in place to kill patients more quickly to open up hospital space, instead of compassionately ending someone’s suffering.

One of the most controversial end-of-life decisions is “physician-assisted suicide” (PAS). This method of suicide involves a physician providing a patient, at his or her own request, with a lethal dose of medication, which the patient self-administers. The ethical acceptability and the desirability of legalization of this practice both continue to cause controversy (Raus, Sterckx, Mortier 1). Vaco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg were landmark decisions on the issue of physician-assisted suicide and a supposed Constitutional right to commit suicide with another's assistance. In Washingotn v. Glucksberg, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state of Washington's ban on physician-assisted suicide was not unconstitutional.

A poll in 1999 found that 52% of Americans though that Kevorkian should have been found guilty on some charge, while only 27% said that he was not guilty. The survey also found that 45% of Americans have a positive opinion of Kevorkian while 36% have an unfavorable one. After being informed that Kevorkian does not have a license to practice medicine and that he supports the right of doctors to help healthy patients die, his approval rating dropped to 19%, while his unfavorable rating rose to 57%.

Facts: The State of Washington is the Petitioner in this case along with the Attorney General. The Respondents are Washington medical physicians. The physicians in this case periodically treated patients that were terminally ill. The physicians claimed that they would provide assistance for the patients in ending their lives if it were not for Washington State’s ban on assisted suicides,

This article talks about the death with dignity act which was passed by the state of Oregon in 1994. With 51.3% of voters being in favor of the act, Oregon became the first state to legalize physician assisted suicide in the united states. The approval of this act has been regarded as one of the most controversial ballots in the history of Oregon. Many adversaries to the bill have challenged the bill's impact on patients as they feared that many patients would go to end their lives even if their illness isn't really severe and that many would abuse life and health insurance policies. The legality of this act has been challenged many times with some of them including when former congress and US attorney general John Ashcroft from 1997 to 2003

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld court decisions in Washington and New York states that criminalized physician-assisted suicide on July 26, 1997.12 They found that the Constitution did not provide any “right to die,” however, they allowed individual states to govern whether or not they would prohibit or permit physician-assisted suicide. Without much intervention from the states individuals have used their right to refuse medical treatment resulting in controversial passive forms of euthanasia being used by patients to die with dignity such as choosing not to be resuscitated, stopping medication, drinking, or eating, or turning off respirators.9

A policeman witnesses a man trapped underneath a burning truck. Desperate and in pain, the man asks the policeman to shoot him and save him the pain of dying a slow and insufferable death. As a result, he shoots. The policeman’s dilemma is commonly referenced in support of physician-assisted-suicide, or PAS. Euthanasia and assisted suicide are interchangeable terms which both lead to the death of an individual. Voluntary PAS is a medical professional, usually a physician, who provides medication or other procedures with the intention of ending the patient’s life. Voluntary PAS is the administration of medicine with the explicit consent from the patient. In terms of this paper, we focus on voluntary physician-assisted suicide in the

Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are both types of medical assistance aiding in ending a suffering patient’s life. This pain may be due to a terminal illness and suffering as well as those in an irreversible coma. This practice of doctor assisted suicide is illegal in many countries, but is increasing in popularity as people start to recognize the positive aspects that euthanasia has to offer for those that fit the criteria. Euthanasia is essential for those, placed in such life diminishing situations, and whom no longer want to experience suffering. This is where the issue gets complicated, and many religious groups argue that individuals should not have the legal right to choose whether they get to die or not, but that it is simply in God’s hands. Suffering patients argue that they should be given the right to choose whether or not they have to experience this suffering, to end their life with the dignity they still have, and to alleviate the stress that their deteriorating life conditions have on their families, themselves and the entire healthcare system. Therefore, despite the many arguments, euthanasia can have a very positive impact on the lives and families of suffering individuals, as well as the Canadian healthcare system.

It is thought that the presumed vulnerable would be left helpless if physician-assisted suicide were legalized, though evidence shows this claim is false. People presumed vulnerable to physician assisted suicide are the uninsured, the poor, people with little education, people older than 80, women, people with mental illnesses, people with physical disabilities, minors and racial and ethnic minorities. There is no evidence supporting the claim that any of these groups have been adversely affected since physician-assisted suicide was legalized in Oregon in 1997. Since the law was passed in 1997, 460 patients have died from ingesting physician prescribed medication under the Death with Dignity Act (Department of Human Services, 2010). In 2009 a total of 59 deaths were from physician-assisted suicide; 98.3 percent were white, 48.3 percent had at least a bachelors degree, 98.7 percent had health insurance, and 78 percent were between 55 and 84 years-old (Department of Human Services, 2010). These statistics clearly show the vulnerable have not been poorly affected by the legalization of physician-assisted suicide.

In 1994, Oregon voters passed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which exempted, “from civil or criminal liability physicians who, in compliance with specific safeguards, dispense or prescribe (but not administer) a lethal dose of drugs upon the request of the terminally ill patient.” Oregon, to this day, remains the only state within the Union to allow physician-assisted suicide. In 1997, the United States Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case that, although there was no constitutionally protected right to physician-assisted suicide, states have permitted to pass laws allowing it. Thus, the issue of euthanasia remains widely open to philosophical, political, legal, and ethical challenges.