Persuasive Essay On Physician Assisted Suicide

The word suicide gives many people negative feelings and is a socially taboo subject. However, suicide might be beneficial to terminally ill patients. Physician- assisted suicide has been one of the most controversial modern topics. Many wonder if it is morally correct to put a terminally ill patient out of their misery. Physicians should be able to meet the requests of their terminally ill patients. Unfortunately, a physician can be doing more harm by keeping someone alive instead of letting them die peacefully. For example, an assisted suicide can bring comfort to patients. These patients are in excruciating pain and will eventually perish. The government should not be involved in such a personal decision. A physician- assisted suicide comes with many benefits for the patient. If a person is terminally ill and wants a physician assisted suicide, then they should receive one.

Thesis Statement: Physician Assisted Suicide should be a matter of free will and not just law.

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.

Who dictates how you live your life? How does one define life and when that life should end? If you become terminally ill, would you like the choice to choose how your life ends? In the United States, assisted suicide, is a highly-debated issue. On one side, there are many in support of allowing a person the right to end their life with dignity at the time of their choosing. While others believe, it is a moral right to sustain life and leave a person’s exit from this world to a higher power. The two opposing viewpoints have both compassionate reasons and disadvantages; nevertheless, a person’s human rights as an individual are the most important aspect to uphold.

The United States is a nation founded on freedoms and liberties, giving each citizen the ability to make their own life decisions. This freedom includes all aspects of one’s life, including medical care. With freedom comes responsibility, and this is true in terms of physician-assisted suicide. The ongoing struggle between those in favor and those opposed to this subject has ravaged the medical field, bringing into question what is morally and ethically right. The fact of the matter is that physician-assisted suicide is neither morally nor ethically acceptable under any circumstance. Not only is it a direct violation of a doctor’s Hippocratic Oath, but it is not constitutionally binding. Physician-assisted suicide would also lead to

"You have stage IV lung cancer that has metastasized to your lymph nodes and bones. Your prognosis is poor; you may have another 18 months left [to live]." The oncologist’s words marked the beginning of my ex-husband’s physical and emotional suffering until his untimely death in January 2017. Witnessing his unrelenting pain and watching him suffer from lung cancer and the horrible side effects of chemotherapy, I wondered why the doctors did not offer him any other alternatives other than living in progressive pain. Why would they let him suffer for the next 18 months with ineffective pain management treatment when his prognosis was so poor? This option should have been available to him, but due to state laws and

Physician assisted suicide, or the so-called right-to-die, is a highly controversial issue that has appeared before many state and federal legislators but, has failed to pass in many states due to the huge opposition from groups such as the Catholic Church and disabled-rights organizations. However, physician assisted suicide is when a life ending medication is prescribed by a doctor for the patient, most commonly with a terminal illness, to take on their own. This medication merely accelerates the rate at which the person dies; therefore, it can not be considered suicide because they are only accelerating the rate at which the patient dies (Drum 29-31). In order for a patient to qualify

Terminally ill individuals suffer during their last days, so most of them decide to end their lives. Physician-assisted suicide is the voluntary termination of one’s own life by the administration of a lethal substance. Some believe that if the physician-assisted suicide is legal in the country, it will give the insurance companies more money, also that some physicians will end patients live without their concern; however, terminally ill individuals shouldn’t suffer and live with pain, likewise the patients live with their body deteriorating and that is not quality of life.

How does one know when a practice is morally sound or not? Is it the information that follows it? Is it the ethics involved in the situation? Is it the persons involved happiness or their autonomy? Constantly this question is being asked about every single medical decision out there. One of the most debated topics right now is physician assisted suicide. This is the idea that a doctor can prescribe medication to patients so they can pass away on their own terms. In the rest of the essay one will find what physician assisted suicide or death is and how it came to be. One will be able to learn a real life example of how it works in America right now and why it should be implemented all over the rest of the country. One will also

Physician assisted suicide is a safe way for a patient to achieve the outcome that they wish for. There are many positive outcomes that results from physician assisted suicide. These include, not having to suffer a long and painful death, being in control of your own body and to receive the treatment that they want. The patient has decided that there are no other options for them. According to the hippocratic oath, a doctor’s main goal is to help their patient, which sometimes results in helping them with their death.

Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) is a measure taken to end the suffering of terminally ill patients. It should be a right granted to all citizens who are suffering from a degenerative, painful, or fatal condition that would cause them to be unable to enjoy their lives. There are multiple definitions within the medical and legal communities about assisted suicide, but in general, the utmost debate is when a suicide is assisted by a physician as opposed to private citizens or family member. Even though the benefits of assisted suicide for the terminally ill individual are incredibly significant, the debate is not free from questions about the responsibilities of the medical community such as those offered by enthusiasts

One often overlooked concern about physician assisted suicide is the role that the physician plays in it. Gert Helgesson, Anna Lindblad, Hans Thulesius and Niels Lyone conducted a survey in Sweden regarding the attitudes towards PAS in the general public and medical professionals. Surprisingly, the general public had more positives views compared to physicians. In fact, most nurses who care for terminal patients were less likely to be pro PAS (Lachman, 2010, p. 124). Many of the doctors’ concerns were that they themselves did not want to be the one administering the lethal drugs. Helgesson et al. writes that many physicians “think it should not be handled by physicians in the regular health-care system… because they do not want to do it themselves”

Physician assisted suicide is requested by the terminally ill, typically when the pain from the illness is too much to handle and is not manageable through treatments or other medications. Assisted suicide is more of a broad term for helping someone die a good death, physician assisted suicide is where a medical doctor provides information and medication and the patient then administers the medications themselves. Euthanasia is also another term that is commonly heard, this refers to a medical doctor that voluntarily administers the lethal dose of medication to the patient when the patient requests it, due to not physically being able to do it themselves (Humphry, 2006). There pros and cons with this topic throughout the world, but is one of the biggest debated things here in the United States of America and to this day there are only five states that have legalized physician-assisted suicide (ProCon.org, 2015). The government should allow patients that are terminally ill the right to choose physician assisted suicide, why should they have to suffer when there is a way out.

As I stated earlier, many oppose physician-assisted suicide for many different moral and ethical reasons. Many people all around the world are against the legalization of physician-assisted suicide because according to Nargus Ebrahimi’s article “The Ethics of Euthanasia,”

The bypass of safeguards and laws, plus hardly if any pursuit, provides a number manifest of your communal dissemination fact described by Keown 5,28. Till now, no claims of assisted suicide have already been emitted to the principled authorities for in addition examination in Belgium. In the Netherlands, 16 facts (0.21% of all notified litigations) were emitted to the principled authorities inside the initially 4 lifespan subsequently the putting out of misery law win end result; few were explored, and zilch were prosecuted 5. In one claim, a barrister who provided recommendation to a non-phrase mentally ill man on the way to hold self-destruction was acquitted 29. There has so been an developing patience regarding transgressions of one's law, indicating a vary in social ethics back of judicialization of putting out of misery in addition to assisted self-destruction.