Physician Assisted Suicide Position Paper

Physician Assisted Suicide Is it Right or Wrong? The ethical issues of physician-assisted suicide are both emotional and controversial, as it ranks right up there with abortion. Some argue physician assisted suicide is ethically permissible for a dying person who has choosing to escape the unbearable suffering at the end of life. Furthermore, it is the physician’s duty to alleviate the patients suffering, which at times justifies providing aid-in -dying. These arguments rely a great deal on the respect for individual autonomy, which recognizes the rights of competent people to choose the timing and manner of their death, when faced with terminal illness.

Physician-assisted suicide should be legal nationwide. As a former hospital employee, I know first-hand that some diseases can cause so much disability and pain that patients want to end their lives because they have had enough. Something dear to me is personal autonomy, a right of all people. If the patient is competent and wants to end their life, and a health care provider is willing to humanely help end that patient's life, then physician-assisted suicide should be legal and be performed, per the individual's wishes.

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

Physician-assisted suicide can be described as the act of a terminally ill individual obtaining a lethal prescription in order to exercise their right to die with dignity. Though physician-assisted suicide is highly controversial, it is legally practiced in a small number of states within the United States. Much of the controversy surrounding physician-assisted suicide relates to the social, political, and ethical questions and considerations concerning the practice. Regardless

Suicide is one person’s personal decision; physician-assisted suicide is a patient who is not capable of carrying the task out themselves asking a physician for access to lethal medication. What people may fail to see however is that the physician is not the only healthcare personnel involved; it may include, but is not limited to, a physician, nurse, and pharmacist. This may conflict with the healthcare worker’s own morals and there are cases in which the patient suffers from depression, or the patient is not receiving proper palliative care. Allowing physician-assisted suicide causes the physician to become entangled in an ethical and moral discrepancy and has too many other issues surrounding it for it to be legal.

By contrast, Oregon being the only law allowing terminally ill adults to request a lethal dose of drugs from a physician requires two physicians to agree the patient is of sound mind and has less than six months to live. California is in the works of voting on a similarly careful measure. One of its sponsors cites Dr. Kevorkian as “the perfect reason we need this law in California. We don’t want there to be more Dr. Kevorkians” (The New York Times, 2007).”

1. (problem – PAS): In today’s society, Physician Assisted Suicide is one of the most questionable and debatable issues. Many people feel that it is wrong for people to ask their doctor to help them end their life; while others feel it is their right to choose between the right to life and the right to death. “Suffering has always been a part of human existence.” (PAS) “Physicians have no similar duty to provide actions, such as assistance in suicide, simply because they have been requested by patients. In deciding how to respond to patients ' requests, physicians should use their judgment about the medical appropriateness of the request.” (Bernat, JL) Physician Assisted Suicide differs from withholding or discontinuing medical treatment, it consists of doctors providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication to aid in the use to end their life.

Terminally ill patients’ requests for physician-assisted suicide are now a viable possibility. Knowing the pathways to answering to those patients, as their requests for assisted death persist, is upmost importance. As of June, 9th 2016 California became the fifth state to allow physician-assisted suicide. The California’s End of Life Option Act authorizes any individual 18 years of age or older, who has been diagnosed as terminally ill and fits specific criteria, to solicit administration of assisted dying drugs at the hands of his/her attending physician. This Act will require specific documentation and data to be submitted to the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) by the attending physician

The book was a great read and I couldn’t put it down. I’m willing to bet groupies have been one of the most sexually abused people on earth BEFORE they became groupies as are porn stars and prostitutes. It’s difficult to find a prostitute or porn star who hasn’t been sexually abused and when you are speaking about a high-strung group of very emotionally fragile people you are talking PTSD. I really think PTSD is a form of a nervous breakdown where your defenses are so hammered you can no longer cope. The resulting hormone stress response causes long term brain damage to the hippocampi and amygdala actually changing the sizes of these structures. Now add the epigenetic changes caused by the rush of adrenal corticosteroids bathing the brain

Alma Moctezuma Western Governors University WGU Student ID # 000429008 Thesis statement: Research suggests the legalization of assisted suicide is necessary throughout all states in the U.S. because it will give a human being the moral right to choose freely, provide them with an opportunity for death with dignity, and allow for the option of timely organ donation. Annotated Bibliography CNN U.S. Edition.

However, there are many checks on the system so this doesn’t happen. In Oregon, which is the basis for the Death With Dignity laws in the other four states that offer it, the restrictions are that the patient must be 18 years old, a resident of Oregon, capable of making health decisions for themselves, and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will result in death within six months (Norman-Eady). These are the regulations for people to request the lethal prescription. After all of these requirements are met, the patient must then the patient has to make two separate requests for the prescriptions with 15 days in-between, have two witnesses sign on their behalf, have a confirmation from another physician of the diagnosis as well as capability of making the medical decision, refer to a physiatrist if their capability is in question, show alternatives in treatment to the patient, and finally, a request will be made to notify immediate family of the request (Norman-Eady). This all goes to show that the process is made to weed out those who are suicidal or with psychological problems. The regulations are to make sure that everyone who gets the prescription drugs has thought thoroughly about their decision, actually has a terminal

There has been much global debate as to whether physician-assisted suicide should be legalized. Physician-assisted suicide is defined as taking place “when a doctor helps a person to commit suicide by providing drugs for self-administration” (Tomlinson, Spector, Nurock, & Stott, 2015). Other means of assisted suicide include active euthanasia, which is an act undertaken by the physician himself that involves “…administering a lethal drug at the request of a patient with the explicit intention to hasten death” (Rietjens et al., 2006). For the purpose of this ethical review, the term “assisted suicide” will be used to envelop both active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; the intent of this paper is to examine the arguments for and against assisted suicide from a nursing standpoint.

Unfortunately situations arise where one only has two options. Miraculous situations happen every day by the Grace of God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. So as human beings, how can one devalue the quality of life of another human being? The practice of Euthanasia and Physician assisted suicide does exactly that; Euthanasia is the intentional ending of one’s life by killing a person for the benefit of that person meanwhile, physician assisted suicide occurs when a physician provides a competent patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the intent of ending his or her own life(Batten 1). The word euthanasia simply means an easy or painless death (eu meaning well, thanatos meaning death). Euthanasia was first

The topic that my group chose for the AP Capstone group project was Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, as we all thought that it would be a topic that would be interesting to write about. Additionally, my group was curious about the topic, and personally, I have aspirations to have some sort of career in the medical field one day. Another member in our group was very interested in law, and the other was curious about the topic, so we decided to go with the topic of physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. However, we originally thought that the group paper would be a very easy assignment as we, as a group had worked on other papers together before, but having our papers flow together and editing down repeated or unnecessary information was way harder than I

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.