Physician Assisted Suicide Should Not Be Legalized

Imagine laying in a hospital bed living everyday in extreme pain with no hope of getting better. This scenario explains what many people go through everyday, which is a living with a terminal illness. M. Lee, a science historian, and Alexander Stingl a sociologist, define terminal illness as “an illness from which the patient is not expected to recover even with treatment. As the illness progresses death is inevitable” (1). There are not many options for the terminally ill besides dying a slow and painful death, but assisted suicide could be best option for these patients. Assisted suicide is “any case in which a doctor gives a patient (usually someone with a terminal illness) the means to carry out their own suicide by using a lethal dose of medication” (Lee and Stingl 1). Some feel that assisted suicide is unnecessary because it is too great of a controversy and will only cause problems in society. However, assisted suicide should be legal in the United States as long as there are strict regulations to accompany it.

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.

A woman suffering from cancer became the first person known to die under the law on physician-assisted suicide in the state of Oregon when she took a lethal dose of drugs in March, 1998. The Oregon Death with Dignity Act passed a referendum in November, 1997, and it has been the United States ' only law legalizing assisted suicide since then. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, more than 4,000 doctors have approved of the assisted suicide law (cited in "The Anguish of Doctors,” 1996). The law allows terminally ill patients who have been given six months or less to live and wish to hasten their deaths to obtain medication prescribed by two doctors. The most important thing to notice is that this law does not include those who have been on a life support system nor does it include those who have not voluntarily asked physicians to help them commit suicide. The issue of doctor-assisted suicide has been the subject of the heated dispute in recent years. Many people worry that legalizing doctor assisted suicide is irrational and violates the life-saving tradition of medicine. However, physician-assisted suicide should be legalized because it offers terminally ill people an opportunity for a peaceful death and recognized the inadequacy of current medical practice to deal with death.

For multiple years, the debate on physician assisted suicide has prevailed. Physician assisted suicide is the death of a terminally ill patient, who wants to die on their own terms with the administration of a doctor. This is different than euthanasia because physician assisted suicide is backed by a controlling legal authority (“Physician…”). Some debaters are uncomfortable with the morality issues that arise with doctors killing patients or physician assisted suicide being abused. Others focus on the pain people who are terminally ill suffer from and the control physician assisted suicide gives them. Overall, the right to live or die should not be up to the government. Physician assisted suicide is legal in six states within the United States. Specific regulations are already practiced in five of those six states. Legalizing physician assisted suicide nationally would solve any regulation issue. Physician-assisted suicide should be legal nationwide with strict regulations in order to offer the freedom that the United States stands for.

Many Americans are diagnosed with a terminal illness each day. Hearing that kind of news and knowing there is less than a year left to live and the quality of life would no doubt be heartbreaking. During the last few months of a terminal patient’s life they are often in tremendous pain and suffering. Those with terminal illnesses are treated with life prolonging measures including chemotherapy and radiation. These treatments and the illness itself often leave the patient 's feeling as if they are a shell of who they were and miserable. “Numerous ailments such as certain types of cancer result in a slow, agonizing death” (Messerli, Joe). Physician Assisted Suicide allows

Medical ethics and patient care go hand and hand. As health care providers, it is their duty to see that the patient 's needs are met. We are charged to insure comfort and proper recovery. The question here is whether there is a difference for patients who request voluntary euthanasia or assisted suicide. These patients have the same rights to quality care of their bodies as we all do. Although, the United States constitution ensures us the right to life, it doesn 't mean that the right to die is taken away. Five states currently allow physician assisted suicide. In each state there has been controversial and contentious debate as to whether states should follow the lead of states that have allowed PAS.

Physician assisted suicide has been legal in Oregon since November 1997. Over 750 people have taken advantage of this law since it was passed. Many people think there is something wrong with such this and it should be outlawed. I will argue that there is no moral basis for the outlaw of such a practice.

Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act. For example, the physician provides sleeping pills and information about the lethal dose, while aware that the patient may commit suicide (Pullicino, n.d). On the other side, natural death occurs when a patient dies from the consequences of old age or disease. The patient 's death may be at least partly due to surgery, to a treatment or to a medication (or to their complications), that is given in an appropriate dose and for an appropriate indication, with the intent of treating a disease or relieving pain (Pullicino, n.d).

Physician-assisted suicide is when a terminally ill patient requested a physician to facilitate the patient death by providing the necessary lethal dose of a drug which enables the patient to perform the life-ending act. Provided that, Physician assisted suicide has been part of the debate about improving end-of-life care for terminally ill patients for decades. As a result, physician assisted suicide may be viewed morally wrong by some people, but morally permissible by another.

Imagine being born premature, and while being nothing more than a defenseless baby in the hospital unit, an infection emerges in your bowel lining. As a result of the infection you live most of your life in the hospital with an exception of several months. Imagine only being able to spend two birthdays and two Christmases in your home. Imagine being 20 and having undergone over 300 painful surgeries. Can you imagine yourself being 13 and talking about dying from how much pain you have been through? Danny Bond can. After suffering almost every day of his life, he attempted to commit suicide, but his mom resuscitated him both times. Therefore, Danny decided to starve himself to end his suffering once and for all (Grimminck). People such as Danny, cancer, and ALS patients, who are battling terminal illnesses, deserve the right to choose when enough is enough. Physician assisted suicide should be legalized because it’s the compassionate thing to do, people deserve autonomy and because it is a better alternative.

Physician-assisted suicide, abbreviated as PAS, is a topic that carries wide concerns to people in the United States. PAS is being deliberated on whether a physician should be legally allowed to prescribe a lethal drug to its patient. Many views conflict each other on this topic, whether it is because of religion, morals, or ethics. As PAS can be a difficult subject to others, PAS is usually decided by the patient itself.

Taking a pro approach for physician assisted suicide, Jones’s article delivers the facts to why physician assisted suicide becomes legal. Physician assisted suicide is indeed legal in five U.S states such as, California, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado. Rather than the article being good or bad, this text is highly biased. Jones provides facts to why physician assisted suicide should be legalized. Applying this article helps provide factual evidence about the Death with Dignity laws.

Currently, in Vermont, California, Oregon, Washington,and New Mexico, lethal medication is being given to terminally Ill patients to end their lives. There are several reasons why assisted suicide is illegal in the majority of states, such as the demand for suicide due to a patient 's excruciating pain, misinterpreted life expectancies and diagnoses, poor medical coverage by insurance companies, and the financial interests of the patients families. On the other hand, some suggest various reasons why assisted suicide should be legal. The legal status of physician assisted suicide, as a hotly debated topic, teeters on both sides of legality in varying

In the article “Why Doctors Must Not be Complicit in Killing Their Patients,” published in Ethics and Medicine: An International Journal of Bioethics Dr. C. Ben Mitchell, Ph.D., discusses the ethics of physician-assisted suicide. In the process of physician-assisted suicide, a doctor purposefully provides a terminally ill patient with the means to take their own life. This is often confused with active euthanasia; however, they are not the same thing. In euthanasia, the doctor administers the lethal drug to the patient, but in physician-assisted suicide, the patient must take the lethal drugs themselves. There is much debate over physician-assisted suicide today. Some people believe physician-assisted suicide should be illegal because

Physician-assisted suicide enables terminally ill patients to die comfortably and peacefully in their own homes. Terminally ill patients suffer through constant pain in their final months, and there remains a “residual obligation to relieve suffering” when palliative and hospice care reach a stagnant point (Quill). Patients will reach a point where the value of life weighs against the consistent suffering they endure on daily basis. Those seeking physician assisted suicide maintain the ability to forcibly starve themselves by declining food and drink. It takes more energy for terminally ill patients to push themselves to