What Is Assisted Suicide

Performing a physician assisted suicide is an act of great kindness, not murder as those against it would have one believe. It is compassionate to end people's suffering, especially when they have nothing to live for. When a patient is untreatable and in agony, then the only options is to treat the symptoms and make the patient more comfortable.

Physician Assisted Suicide, the practice of allowing a physician to aid their patient in committing suicide, is ethically wrong. It is stated clearly in the Hippocratic Oath that doctors take: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.” This part of the Hippocratic Oath proves that doctors should not aid their patients in suicide because that would have a negative effect on the patient’s health. Rather, they should do whatever is in their power to find another solution to their patient’s problem. In this oath, the doctor swears to attempt to cure their patients of their medical problems, this does not include ending their patient’s life to solve the problem. Breaking an oath

Physician assisted suicide (PAS) has been debated for many years now. Is physician assisted suicide right or is it wrong? Many people have very different views about this issue. Some supporters feel that people should have the moral right to choose freely what they will do with their lives as long as they do not harm others. This right of free choice includes the right to end one's life when they choose. While you have some supporters who oppose any measures of permitting physician assisted suicide argue that physicians have a moral duty to preserve all life. To allow physicians to assist in destroying someone’s life violates the Hippocratic Oath to "do no harm." Opponents of physician-assisted suicide also believe that better pain management

sit in pain due to their sicknesses. Should these people have to go through all

Euthanasia is a controversial topic regarding whether or not physician-assisted suicide should be further legalized. Euthanasia is the act of a medical doctor injecting a poison into a patient 's body in order to kill them. Some argue that euthanasia should be legalized to put people out of pain and misery. However, others argue that some people with terminal illnesses would do anything to live longer and believe that it is a selfish and cowardly act. Euthanasia is disputable because of the various ethical issues, including, but not limited to: murder and suicide illegality, the Hippocratic Oath, and medical alternatives. As someone who has had many traumatic experiences and who wants to become a doctor, I am very passionate about the well-being of my future patients and the responsibility to do no harm to them. For these lawful, logical, and personal reasons, euthanasia 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.

People with incurable diseases are living in excruciating pain up until the day they die. Assisted suicide, though it sounds dreadful, can put an end to the suffering. Terminally ill patients should get the option to “die with dignity.” It is their individual right! For the common good, I think assisted suicide should be legal in all fifty states. Otherwise individuals will be suffering for years on end, knowing that there is

Once people are diagnosed to be terminally-ill, they only have a certain amount of time to live, and they know that as their disease progresses that they will only get worse and worse and they will eventually lose themselves. These people should have a choice as of whether they want to live out those dreadful days that lie ahead of them, or to simply end their lives peacefully, without any pain. Physician- Assisted Suicide or Euthanasia allows people to make the decision. Although the end-result of both procedures is the same, the technique differs slightly. In Physician- Assisted Suicide, the physician injects the lethal substances, and with Euthanasia, the doctor only provides a lethal amount of a drug to the patient and they ingest it themselves. Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia should be legalized as a federal law so that the patients have the right to decide whether they would like to end their lives when in a terminally-ill state.

Physician assisted suicide is a topic that promotes debates from all sides. At the core of the physician assisted suicide debate is the idea that people should have the right to commit suicide if they choose to. There are those who feel human beings should have complete control over what happens to their bodies. Then there are those who feel we should strive to save life at all costs. When you add in the idea of a physician who has sworn to do no harm helping a person to end their life, the debate gets even more complicated. One opponent of Physician assisted suicide is Richard Doerflinger. Doerflinger in his article, Assisted Suicide: Pro-Choice or Anti-Life?, uses the Utilitarian theory of the greater good to explain how the slippery slope idea means physician assisted suicide will ultimately bring about more harm than good. On the other side of the debate Anthony Back, Robert Baker, et al. defend the rights of individuals to choose to end their life with the help of a physician based on a patient’s right to self-govern.

Physician-assisted suicide is an extremely controversial issue. Physician-assisted suicide is when a physician assists a terminally ill patient in ending their life by providing the patient with both the information and medicine necessary for them to carry out the task themselves (Ebrahimi 2012). On October 27, 1997 Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Law, permitting terminally ill state residents to end their lives by giving themselves a lethal dose of medicine prescribed by their doctor (Oregon.gov). There are people who believe that the Death with Dignity Law should be implemented across the nation because it gives people who are already dying from a disease a chance to end their life with dignity, while others believe that doctors

Most patients suffering from incurable diseases or chronic illnesses will suffer and may experience physical deterioration or psychological impacts. Depending on the illness, many people in these conditions must deal with grueling side effects of their debilitating medical condition, which is why I believe that it is best to have a patient die with the physician assisted suicide. Because they are still entitled to their dignity and still have their autonomy. With physician assisted suicide, I believe that people have a right to die in a humane way. If a person were to take their own life, would you rather have them be assisted by a compassionate doctor who can ensure they feel no pain, or would you want the person to make clumsy attempts of suicide by hanging themselves, jumping off buildings, or even shooting themselves. I think if you were a family member to that individual who tried those things, I think it would be a much more traumatic experience than if you were to say your goodbyes at a hospital. In my opinion, if people truly wanted to die, nothing is going to stop

I think assisted suicide should stay illegal because doctors and physicians are then responsible for providing prescription medicines or other means to patients who want to die. Assisted suicide is the wrong way for a person to die. The Catholic Church is against assisted suicide because it is against

The controversy of a doctor assisting their patient who is already dying, end their life sooner to save them from continuous unnecessary pain and agony has been the topic of controversy for years. The practice of euthanasia is in my opinion a mercy and should not be banned because in reality it doesn’t physically hurt anyone. You could say it hurts the patient but then again that patient is already in tremendous pain or in an incapacitated state of no recovery, as in paralyzed or brain damage etc., so in reality it would actually help them by assisting ending their pain by assisted suicide. A doctors job is also always help their patients and the practice of assisted suicide in many ways is actually helping the person. However there has and probably always will be people who do not agree with the idea of a dying person end their life for sooner than nature had intended. This demographic would suggest that by dying by your own hand or assisted by a physician for medical reasons is still considered plain suicide. And for the religious people it is a sin by their beliefs. The people could also argue that it is not a person’s right to make that decision.

Not only is assisted suicide considered murder, it also goes against Physicians’ Hippocratic Oath. “Hippocratic Oath: An oath (or promise) all physicians must swear to uphold, regarding the ethical practices of the medical profession” (Lee). By allowing doctors to stray from this oath, it will be easier for them to aid in or carry out assisted suicides when it will never be entirely necessary for them to consider the option. “In 2005, Texas doctors removed two patients from life support without advanced directions and against the wishes of the patient’s family” (Pawlick). By not legalizing assisted suicides, families will be able to decide when their family member is physically unable to continue with the provided treatments, but only when the patient themselves can no longer communicate their wishes and no document stating how they should go about the situation has been left in their families possession.

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.