Physician Assisted Suicide Arguments

Do terminally ill patients have a right to die with the assistance of a physician? – Pros

Who gets to make the choice whether someone lives or dies? If a person has the right to live, they certainly should be able to make the choice to end their own life. The law protects each and everyone’s right to live, but when a person tries to kill themselves more than likely they will end up in a Psychiatric unit. Today we hear more and more about the debate of Physician assisted suicide and where this topic stands morally and ethically. Webster 's dictionary defines Physician assisted suicide as, suicide by a patient facilitated by means (as a drug prescription) or by information (as an indication of a lethal dosage) provided by a physician who is aware of the patient 's intent (Webster, 1977).

Is physician assisted suicide ethically justified? Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is defined as ending one’s own life by taking a fatal dosage of a substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician (MedicineNET.com, 2015). PAS is a very sensitive and controversial topic that raises many moral and ethical questions. While some feel that a person should be able to die with dignity and under their own terms, others feel that this is not a choice we can ethically make. PAS recently made national headlines when Brittany Maynard, a twenty-nine year old woman diagnosed with stage IV glioblastoma, went public with her plan to end her own life under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act that was passed in 1997. Maynard legally received a prescription from her physician for a lethal dose of barbiturates and decided to end her life own life instead of suffering the painful death that loomed in her near future. She ended her own life on November, 3, 2014 with her family by her side (Durando, 2014). There are many moral issues that surrounded Maynard’s decision and whether or not PAS is ethical, however it is important to understand both sides of the debate to truly get the entire picture of the complexity of this issue before making the determination if physician-assisted suicide is ethically justified.

Death is inevitable, but do we ride it out until the bitter end or chose a quick and painless death? Many people are against the idea of physician-assisted suicide and others aren’t such as Faye Girish writer of the article “Should Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legalized?” Published in 1999 in Insight on the News, she argues that the legalization of Physician-Assisted Suicide will allow those who wish to die a peaceful way to do so. Faye establishes the building of her credibility with plausible facts and statistics, great emotional appeal, and personal sources. However, throughout the article several times she attempts to use pity to guilt people into agreeing with her argument, uses celebrities as sources, and doesn’t cite some of her sources questioning her credibility and finally, her argument.

Every individual has to make choices in life; life can be seen as a plethora of crossroads veering off into different directions with every which way. Choices that can create or destroy life; in the blink of an eye a life could end, but in the same moment a new life could be brought into existence. The choice of physician-assisted suicide provides control, familiarity, and closure to the terminally ill patients. The patient is able to choose where he or she will be, when the time is right, and the ability to be surrounded around loved-ones and gain closure by saying goodbye in a timely-manner.

Everyone will die at some point, and many people wish to have a good death. The Institute of Medicine defines a good death as one that is free from avoidable stress and suffering for both the patient and family, and is in accord with family and patient wishes. Physician assisted suicide can help those who are terminally ill receive the good death that they wish to have. Physician assisted suicide allows patients to die on their own terms before suffering from their terminal illness becomes too much for them to bear. Jason Barber’s wife, Kathleen, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Both Kathleen and Jason believed in physician assisted suicide. Kathleen had watched her mother battle leukemia, and stated, “I wish there were a pill which would

In Canada it has historically been a criminal offence to assist another person in ending his or her own life. This includes the inability of a person to seek a physician-assisted death. This law was recently overturned with the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Carter v. Canada (Attorney General)[1]. The main issue was whether the prohibition on physician-assisted dying found in the Criminal Code[2] violated the claimants' rights under sections 7 and 15[3] of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms[4]. The claimants defined physician-assisted death and physician-assisted dying as a "situation where a physician provides or administers medication that intentionally brings about the patient's death, at the request of the patient."[5]

A patient who has a terminal illness suffer tremendously every day. Since there is no cure for any terminal illness, doctors ease the patient's pain by prescribing them pain medication up to their final days. If it is acceptable for a beloved pet to be put euthanized, how is it any different for a terminally ill patient to end their life by physician-assisted suicide? Currently, terminally ill patients are fighting for their right to die. There is a hand full of states that have passed the law that allows terminally ill adult patients, who have six months to live, to end their lives by euthanasia or better known as physician-assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicide is when a doctor performs a patient a lethal amount of substances into a patient, to end their life. The state of Virginia

Over the last few years there has been great debates over rather or not physician Assisted Suicide should be legal or not. Physician assisted suicide is a catalyst to the inevitable and should be legalized nationwide and regulated by the Government. Issues like this are usually looked at with an emotional standpoint instead of a logical one. The level of controversy shadows that of John Steinbeck’s novel of Mice and Men because George kills Lennie out of mercy, George understands that Lennie’s quality of life was not high. While people can understand the novel it seems to be difficult for them to understand the situation at hand. Most people especially family members do not understand because they are in denial or being selfish with the parent's

Physician assisted suicide is an issue that has been debated for many years. Many people argue that people have the right to die by any means possible while others argue that human life should be precious and should be protected at all cost. While that is true that doesn't mean you can force someone to stay alive. Do you believe that physician assisted suicide should be legal for the terminally ill?

Physician-assisted suicide is the practice of providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life. Physician assisted suicide or PAS is different from euthanasia because with euthanasia, someone else’s causes death of the person. PAS the person his or her death. Physician-assisted suicide is the voluntary termination of one's own life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. According to the Death with Dignity National Center, in the 1900s, the first publicized assisted suicide was performed by Dr. Kevorkian in 1990 and again in 1998 when he showed the world a video of this act. He was convicted of murder in 1999. Also in 1990, the U.S Supreme court ruled in the Nancy Cruzan case that the “person has the right to refuse lifesaving medical services”, and her feeding tube was removed which ended her life shortly after. The patient self-determination act was passed which allowed patients to refuse or demand medical treatment.

“Doctors and nurses have sworn to preserve life and relieve suffering – but how to do this when the only way to end suffering is to end life?” (Lewis Vaughn, “Bioethics Principles, Issues, and Cases” pp.594) Should there be an upper hand to make these decisions for our healthcare practitioners? Laws have been set in each state that determine the legalization of physician assisted suicide. Although Louisiana is a conservative state when it comes to the issue of physician-assisted suicide, it should be legalized in my opinion. Ethically, there are theories that support this as well as laws given to our practitioners. By rejecting physician-assisted suicide, patients and their families are suffering needlessly.

In the context of Case Study #1, the doctor must decide on whether or not he will hasten the woman’s death to alleviate her pain; he must decide whether or not there is a moral difference between killing someone and hastening their death to relieve suffering. The woman described has a continuously declining and invariably fatal

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

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.