Physician Assisted Suicide Essay

Pain is universal. In life, everyone will feel pain; it is inevitable and cruel. Physical or emotional, insignificant or severe, it is there. The pain continues mounting into an unbearable amount of suffering. Suffering that blots out everything of worth, such as family, love, aspirations, and optimism. Hopelessness seizes any will to endure. With no way to subside or control the pain, often one will go to extremes in order to be free of it. Many take their life, in order to escape the horror. Committing suicide is a traumatizing experience for any and all involved. Life is precious. The chance to live is only given once, and cannot be taken for granted. Preventing even a single life from ending early is imperative and obligatory

Francis Bacon once said, “I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.” In other words, people are not afraid to die. Rather, they are afraid of the way in which they are going to die. Today, four centuries of medical progress later, Bacon’s words are truer than ever. Medical advances have allowed physicians to prolong the lives of their patients, or maybe it would be better to say, to prolong their deaths. People are made to live too long in ways they would not choose: dependent upon machines, lying in comas, and suffering unbearable pain. Bacon’s “stroke of death” has become the “stretch of death,” giving people all that much more to fear.

Physician assisted suicide is murder. Using euthanasia, increased dosage of morphine or injecting patient’s with a lethal combination of drugs to slow his/her breathing until he/she dies is also murder. Physician assisted suicide is morally wrong. The classical theory for physician assisted suicide is utilitarianism because according to Mosser 2010, “utilitarianism is an ethical theory that determines the moral value of an act in terms of its results and if those results produce the greatest good for the greatest number.” Utilitarianism will solve the physician assisted suicide problem if all of the physicians will stand by the oath they say. According to the Hippocratic

In today's society, a very controversial issue is physician-assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. Many people feel that it is wrong for people, regardless of their health situation, to ask their doctor or attendant to end their life. Others feel it is their right to be able to choose how and when they die. When a doctor is asked to help a patient to their death, they have certain responsibilities that come along with it. Among these duties, they must prove valid information as to the terminal illness the patient is suffering. They also must educate the patient as to what their final options may be. When they make the decision of whether or not to help the patient into death, and should they

Physician assisted suicide/dying (PAD) is it good or bad? PAD is referred to when physician provides patients who are terminally ill with prescriptions of a lethal dose of medication, upon the patient’s request, which the patient intends to use to end their own life (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2011); another option that is close to physician assisted suicide is Euthanasia. Euthanasia is the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2011).

Have you ever thought about how you are going to die? It might be from a heart attack fast and relatively painless or maybe it’ll be suffering slowly from cancer in a hospital bed. Physician-assisted suicide should be legal across America because it is a basic right of all American’s.

Physician assisted suicide is also called euthanasia. It is a highly debated topic on whether it should be legal or not. Some states have taken different stands on this question, some making it legal to do. I believe that every citizen who is suffering from a degenerative, painful or fatal condition, should have the right to decide if they want the option of a physician assisted suicide. I believe in a society such as ours we should all have the right to die with some kind of dignity.

Physician assisted death is a physician aiding in a patient’s death by prescribing a lethal dosage or informing a patient on a lethal amount of medication. This is not a new phenomenon, over the ages of medicine physicians have been asked by patients to end their suffering. More than half of physicians in today’s society have been asked in some form of way to participate in physician assisted death. People should be able to choose rather or not to end their life through terminal illness or in their own manner.

The topic of discussion is one of the most controversial topics in the last decade physician-assisted suicide. This occurs when a physician assists a terminally ill or disabled person to take their own life. Assisting either by giving the physical means or instructions on what method to use to commit suicide with. There are many moral and ethical arguments; some are based on religious beliefs while others are based on the rules of medical ethics. It can be argued that the terminally ill and the disabled should not be forbidden from taking their own lives. It goes against all regularly accepted laws of medical ethics for a doctor to assist in the suicide of a patient. Physicians pledge to not harm patients (Hippocratic Oath).

Currently in America, terminally-ill patients in most states have only two options: receive treatments (some experimental) or wait for natural death. The third option on the other hand, exists in only five states. For dying patients in Montana, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and California, they have the option for a physician assisted suicide (PAS). California recently passed the End of Life Option Act, thereby joining Oregon, Washington, and Vermont when it comes to legalizing PAS via legislation. For Montana, PAS is neither legal nor illegal according to a court decision. Judging by the fact that PAS is currently only practiced in five out of fifty states, it is clear that the issue of hastening the death of patients (by their own wishes) remains a hotly debated topic. This paper will proceed to analyze how each of the five states tackled the issues surrounding PAS.

1. A request for assisted Suicide is typically a cry for help. It is in reality a call for counseling, assistance, and positive alternatives as solutions for very real problems.

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.

2. State Info: (characteristics, size, culture, political culture, industries, features, etc. to explain state support of policy)

Is the role of a medical professional to ensure the health and comfort of their patients, or to help them end their lives? Since Dr. Kevorkian assisted in the suicide of Janet Adkins in 1990, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) has been one of the most controversial issues in the medical field today. While some view it as an individual right, others view it as an unethical issue that goes against medical ethics and religious values. Mr. H. M. is an elderly man who is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and no chance of improvement. After excruciating pain and suffering, he has decided to request physician-assisted death in his home state of Oregon. Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act (DDA) states that terminally ill patients are allowed to use

Suicide, by definition, is the action of intentionally killing oneself. This action has claimed the lives of many people over the years and has increased exponentially. In 2005, suicide was the 11th leading cause of death among Americans. Additionally, every year more than 800,000 people die due to suicide and it is the second leading cause of death of nineteen to twenty-nine year-olds. Because suicide is so common today, it has become a very controversial topic in debate. There are many reasons one may commit suicide from being bullied to chemical imbalances that result in severe depression. The act of suicide raises many moral questions but the one in particular to be addressed is as follows: is suicide morally permissible? If it is the presumption