Physician Assisted Suicide Should Not Be Legalized

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.

There are currently three states that have adopted legislation supporting “Death with Dignity”, also known as physician-assisted suicide. Oregon, Washington, and Vermont have each enacted laws that enable a terminally ill, mentally competent, adult to decide and dictate end of life decisions up to and including the time of their death. Oregon was the first United States (U.S.) to enact legislation and other states in the union have followed suit.

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.

The Oregon Death with Dignity Act was put into effect on October 27, 1997. This act allowed physicians to prescribe to terminally ill patients a lethal dose of medication in order to hasten their death, even though euthanasia is prohibited in the United States. According to Katrina Hedberg, this act has been revised by Oregon legislature, but has still been brought to attention of the United States Supreme Court on raised questions of legality. In order to receive a prescription for the Death with Dignity Act, the patient must reside in Oregon, be a terminally ill adult, and should be expected to die within a six-month time frame. Along with these requirements, patients must be able to make their own healthcare decisions. Katrina Hedberg found that over the course of ten years, physicians had written 546 prescriptions and a total of 341 Oregon residents passed away after the lethal dose under this act. The medications that were prescribed during this time were secobarbital and pentobarbital, and most patients would pass away within an hour of taking pentobarbital. Many physicians have reported that patients who requested these prescriptions often had a loss of autonomy and a decrease in their ability to engage in activities that they enjoyed. The results showed that these factors had increased over the course of ten years. According to physicians, patient’s concerns of pain had also increased during this time. This is still very controversial, but findings have shown that

The recent case of a woman, Brittany Maynard, who chose to end her life before she experienced the severe side effects of Glioblastoma has sparked a debate on whether Physician Assisted Suicide should be made legal in all fifty states. Some people believe that Physician Assisted Suicide violates the Hippocratic Oath, gives a doctor too much power, or leaves vulnerable groups at risk. Others feel that Physician Assisted Suicide will benefit the terminally ill. Physician Assisted Suicide will benefit the terminally ill by offering the option to cease their pain and suffering with a painless medication prescribed by a physician when they feel their quality of life has diminished, and is no longer worth living. With this option available, people can exercise their rights over their body and life, die with a sense of dignity, make organs available to patients who need them if it were legal, and it removes the physician from the death directly leaving it to be a personal exit to one’s life.

Legalizing physician-assisted suicide would allow patients with failing health to decide to end their lives without causing further suffering by trying to fight their illness. Terminally ill patients should be able to decide when to stop fighting an uphill battle. However, if the patient happens to be in such an unfortunate condition to where they cannot speak for themselves, the family member or friend who has the power of attorney should be able to determine when the time comes for the physician to alleviate the suffering. The patient can be “satisfactorily alleviated” by having their physician inject them or give them a substance that speeds up the process of death, rather than only ending their life support or

The Death with Dignity Act, which was accepted by Oregon in 1977 has allowed 1,173 people to receive prescriptions and 752 people have used them to die from physician assistance (Egan 2015). These numbers are very important to consider. Allowing people to simply have the option to use the medicine to end their life, having it at their dispense, gives the patients the feeling that they have some control, and aren’t so helpless. These patients often feel like they have no control over their life anymore. The sickness is slowly killing them, and the option of physician-assisted suicide allows them to have control of one significant part of their life.

Physician assisted suicide for the terminally ill is one of the most debated policies in America. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is only considered a when a patient has a terminal illness and expresses their right to end their life with a physician. This scenario typically takes place when a patient is suffering severely from a terminal illness and it is only a matter of time before they will die. Advocates for PAS have typically had a loved one who is or was suffering through their final stages of life. Each individual state has specific laws and policies regarding the process of PAS; however, the requirements for a patient to be considered for PAS are similar (Death with Dignity, n.d.).

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. 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” (MedicineNet.com, 2004). Many times this ethical issue arises when a terminally-ill patient with and incurable illness, whom is given little time to live, usually less than six-months, has requested a physician’s assistance in terminating one’s life. This practice with the terminally ill is known as euthanasia. Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia is a controversial topic

Physician-assisted suicide has been a topic discussed since the beginning of modern medicine. Any topic that involves someone’s life and decisions that they may make about it usually becomes controversial. Physician-assisted suicide is an end of life option where people can voluntarily request medicine to end their life (Death With Dignity). There are many different opinions about the topic, and some people believe that it should be illegal because of the fact that it’s suicide. Also, many people’s religious or spiritual beliefs inhibit them from supporting this idea. Physician-Assisted Suicide should be legal because people should have control over their lives, there are many requirements to meet, and making it illegal has not stopped people from practicing it.

Many people believe that the passing of Death With Dignity Laws is a slippery slope that will lead to a variety of unethical medical practices including the use of these laws on mentally ill or Alzheimer’s patients. In all of the states that passed the law there are strict guidelines as to how can access the law and in many cases the laws have not changed since they were passed. The laws come from the idea that terminally ill people should be able to control how they suffer and ultimately how they die without interference from the government, religious organizations, or other external sources of policy. Although a patient may have the lethal dose of prescription provided by their physician under the law in their possession they have absolutely no obligation to use it and in many they don’t. In cases where the medication is taken the patients who choose to take it have self-control and more dignity than they would if they had to suffer through the degenerative processes of a terminal illness.

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.

Enacted in late 1997, the “Death With Dignity Act (DWDA)” involves the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications. This process, according to the requirements, does not constitute suicide (“Death With Dignity Act”). In addition to being a resident of Oregon, the patient must be at least 18 years old, capable of making and communicating health care decisions, and diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months. According to recent data, the amount of DWDA prescriptions has steadily increased with average increments of 7 people per year since its enactment, with the exception being a spike from 155 to 218 between 2015 and 2016. The amount of DWDA deaths, however, do not completely match the numbers; although 1,545 received prescriptions between 1997 and 2016, only 991 patients died from ingesting the medication (“Death With Dignity Act”). This brings about an interesting case in the discussion regarding the will to live of these patients, and persuasion to pursue more options. Evidently, not all patients ended their life after receiving the medication to do so, and although their reasons may never be revealed, it is possible to conclude that some number of these circumstances occurred due to a “change of heart”; dissonance in the matter is still present to

It is argued that patients requesting help with hastening death come mostly from those who have not been treated or diagnosed properly (Asch). “There is a growing awareness that loss of dignity and of those attributes that we associate particularly with being human are the factors that most commonly reduce patients to a state of unrelieved misery and desperation,” (Rogatz). It would be to the doctor’s discretion and expertise to diagnose and treat the patient to the best of their ability, and the patient could seek assistance from another doctor if looking for more

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.