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Ethical and Legal Issues of Physician-Assisted Suicide

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Although the physician does not directly end the patient’s life, physician-assisted suicide (PAS) occurs when the physician provides the means (i.e. information or drugs) to commit suicide. Patients who request PAS from their doctors usually suffer from terminal illnesses, such as AIDS, cancer, or neurological disorders, in which death is inevitable, and it is estimated that 12% of physicians receive at least one request for PAS per year (Beck, Wallace, Starks & Pearlman, 1996). While some people believe that the ability to end life in those cases is critical for preserving human dignity, PAS is still a controversial topic because others do not consider assisted suicide moral. The main argument against PAS is that it is contradictory to traditional religious beliefs and philosophical systems. For example, suicide has been considered a sin by the Catholic Church because the people believed God was responsible for creating life and was therefore the only one who had the right to take it (New York State Task Force on Life and the Law [NYSTF], 1994). Although that belief cannot be proven in science, some social groups still consider that God is the only one with the right to take life, and their personal beliefs must be respected. In Ancient Greece, suicide had also been regarded as an abandonment of duty, but current trends are starting to favor individual well-being over compliance to social norms and expectations. Some physicians also believe that using anesthetics should be considered a duty for all medical personnel because patients should have the right to choose to end their suffering (Euthanasia, 1873). Therefore, while the opponents of PAS argue that physicians cannot be granted the right to end life and value social/religious norms over individual desires, the proponents argue that individual conviction and the right to end one’s life is more important

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