...His Specialty is Death On June 4, 1990, Janet Adkins, 54-year-old English teacher from Portland who suffered from Alzheimer's disease said her final goodbyes to Carroll Rehmke, her best friend of 34 years. Then prone in the back of a Volkswagen van in Michigan, she pressed a button to set in motion a machine, which administered saline solution, sodium thiopental to send her into a deep coma and finally a lethal dose of potassium chloride to stop her heart (Wilson). The machine was the brainchild of the Detroit medical pathologist Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Doctor Kevorkian, known as Dr. Death, claimed to have helped 130 people commit suicide when terminally ill, died in Detroit. He was 83. Born in Pontiac, Michigan, to Armenian immigrants, Jacob...
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...At some point in everybody’s life death will inevitably be knocking at the door, and often times many people end up struggling with the best way to cope with it. Dying usually happens because your murdered, you commit suicide, or naturally. We all should know that murder is a person taking another person’s life, suicide is the taking of your own life, and naturally is death by natural causes. Composing a paper as to why a 110 year old person dies would be really challenging for me, mainly because at 110 you are considered to be really old. However, recently there has been another form of death that has a lot of controversy surrounding it. Doctor assisted death also known as Euthanasia. Euthanasia currently does not fall into any of the three before mentioned categories; we put it somewhere in the middle between murder and suicide. Like many other words in our English language euthanasia is Greek rooted eu, it means good and then thanasia means death, combined they mean “good death”. Take a moment and consider you have an illness and the doctors have just informed you it is terminal and you have only four weeks to live. They then tell you that during those four weeks you are going to be in continual excruciating pain and unbearable agony, and that no matter what pain medication they gave you there was nothing that would give you even a moment of relief. What would you do? If you decided to take action would it be in the form of an injection, a handful of pills...
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...Physician-assisted suicide (PAS), also known as active euthanasia; involves the hastening of death through administration of a lethal dose of pharmaceutical drugs, at the request of the terminally-ill patient (Law Digest, 2013). This practice fueled debates about legal and ethical practices in the medical field. Suffering has always been a part of human existence, along with request’s to end these conditions. Death through PAS or euthanasia has been continuously controverted since the beginning of medicine. Advocates of physician assisted suicide feel they have the right to avoid excruciating pain, prolonged suffering, and embrace a timely and dignified death. Adversaries of PAS contend that physicians have a moral responsibility to keep their patients alive as determined in the Hippocratic Oath (one of the oldest binding documents written in history, still bring used by physicians). In 1990, Physician- Assisted Suicide became better known to the public when retired pathologist, Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted his first patient, Janet Adkins, into death. News of Adkins’ death made him a national celebrity and criminal, but ultimately encouraged Kevorkian to rebel and proceed with what he considered, his duty. Murad Kevorkian, better known as Dr. Jack Kevorkian was born on May 26, 1928, in Pontiac, Michigan. He was the middle of 3 children (two girls and himself), born to Levon and Satenig Kevorkian; Armenian immigrants and refugees. Jack had appreciation for his strict upbringing;...
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...suicide with an overdose of sleeping pills. 1985- Betty Rollin publishes "Last Wish," the story of her mother's battle with ovarian cancer. The book reveals that Ida Rollin killed herself with a sedative overdose. 1990- Dr. Jack Kevorkian performs his first assisted suicide, using a homemade machine, to end the life of Alzheimer's patient Janet Adkins. Meanwhile, after protracted legal wrangling, the parents of Nancy Cruzan, who has been in a coma for seven years, are allowed to remove her feeding tube. Friends and co-workers testify in court that she would not have wanted to live. 1991- Hemlock Society founder Derek Humphry first publishes "Final Exit." The controversial suicide "how-to" book later becomes a national best seller. 1994- Voters in Oregon pass a referendum making it the only state in the country that allows doctors to prescribe life-ending drugs for terminally ill patients. The hotly contested law was not put into effect until last year. 1995- George Delury publishes "But What If She Wants to Die?" a diary chronicling his wife's long battle with multiple sclerosis. The book describes the couple's agonizing decision to end her life with a drug overdose. Delury served four months in prison for attempted manslaughter for his role in her death. 1997- In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court rules that the...
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...from the Greek meaning of “good death”. Euthanasia is executed by a physician, while physician assisted suicide allows the patient to proceed the act of death (Ondrey 7-8). Legalization of euthanizing patients has been an ongoing discussion dating back to the beginning of the 20th century (Yount 25). Opposing views find total fault in this medical concept, while supporters see every possible benefit (Ondrey, James H., ed 8). Medical euthanasia, also known...
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...Legal and Ethical Dilemma of Physician Assisted Suicide: An Analysis: People v Kevorkian Angelia Prince Shorter University The Legal and Ethical Dilemma of Physician Assisted Suicide: An Analysis: People v Kevorkian This research was aimed at providing an analysis of the ethical and legal dilemma surrounding physician assisted suicides. The subject of physician-assisted suicide has raised many thought provoking and controversial questions. This paper will evaluate, the ethical dilemma surrounding physician assisted suicides, the case of People v. Kevorkian, the differing laws pertaining to physician assisted suicide in Michigan, Georgia, and Oregon. The purpose of this paper is to provide the reader with information on the state’s most current laws regarding assisted suicide and how the case of People v. Kevorkian was a unique case involving physician-assisted suicide. The Ethical Debate of PAS In his article, Hosseini (2012), argued that physician-assisted suicide (PAS), is a moral and ethical dilemma faced by physicians, ethicists, legal experts, and others. Hosseini went on to explain that PAS is opposed by the American Medical Association (AMA) and all the US states except for Oregon. In his research, Hosseini (2012) used the case, People v. Kevorkian, as a basis to argue that although there is an ethical dilemma surrounding PAS, it was not the act alone that resulted in Dr. Kevorkian’s arrest and sentence. Hosseini posed the question in his research “Is...
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...of pain, and suffering that you make the decision to end your own life. We often have people there in our lives to help us along the way. Parents are there to love us, teachers are there to teach us, and doctors are there to help us when we are sick. But what happens when you are terminally ill, who is there to help you then? Doctors can only do so much. Many people believe that they should have the right to end their lives, while others disagree. If people do decide to end their lives, why shouldn’t they get the best care possible? Dr. Jack Kevorkian is a very well known physician who offered these possibilities to his patients with grim futures. In this paper I will be covering different aspects of the very controversial subject of physician-assisted suicide. Background On April 13, 1999, the infamous doctor performing assisted suicide, Dr. Jack Kevorkian also known as “Dr. Death.” As CNN’s journalist Mallory Simon reported (1999), Kevorkian was sentenced to ten to twenty-five years in prison for second degree murder and three to seven years for delivery of a controlled substance. According to Neal Nicol’s...
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...“Dr. Death” Sydney Speight English B Jack Kevorkian originally wanted to be a baseball radio broadcaster, but his Armenian immigrant parents felt that he should have a more promising career. So he became a doctor, specializing in pathology. Kevorkian worked primarily with deceased people, performing autopsies in order to study the essential nature of diseases. Kevorkian was born on May 28, 1928, in Pontiac, Michigan. He was raised in an Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarian neighborhood. Kevorkian attended the University of Michigan medical school and graduated in 1952. Kevorkian initially received his nickname, "Dr. Death," for his pioneering medical experiments in the 1950's. He photographed the eyes of dying patients in order to determine the exact time of death. As Kevorkian witnessed the suffering of terminally ill patients, he became convinced that they had a moral right to end their lives when the pain became unbearable, and that doctors should assist in this process. To that end, he designed and constructed a machine that started a harmless saline intravenous drip into the arm of a person wishing to die. When the patient was ready, he or she would press a button that would stop the flow of the harmless solution and begin a new drip of thiopental. “This chemical would put the patient into a deep sleep, then a coma. After one minute, the timer in the machine would send a lethal dose of potassium chloride into the patient's arm, stopping the heart in minutes...
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...they die while others argue that, in fact, it could prevent years of pain and suffering. It may be easy to hear the definition of physician assisted suicide and assume it is not morally acceptable, however, there are several educated arguments defending a patients right to choose. According to Dr. Quill, in most surveys, approximately two-thirds of the United States approves of (PAS) as as option for the terminally ill yet when the time comes to legalize (PAS), the vote splits at 50/50. The controversy of (PAS) erupted in 1990 when Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a pathologist, assisted his first patient into death (Landau 80). His first client was Janet Adkins who was a sufferer of Alzheimers. Kevorkian reported the death to police but no prosecution followed (BBC News). Before the story of his assisted suicides hit national news, these issues were not a topic of public discussion. According to the judge that sentenced Kevorkian to twenty five years behind bars, “He brought to the forefront end-of-life issues” (BBC News). Dr. Kevorkian assisted others in death who suffered from cancer, alzheimers, arthritis, heart disease, emphysema, and multiple schlerosis. Despite his many critics, Dr. Kevorkian insisted that he was simply helping patients ease their suffering. He had hoped that euthanasia would be legalized by the time he passed but unfortunately the topic still remains highly...
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...There is proof of euthanasia in our ancient history. In greek terms euthanasia means “good death” and a lot of people saw this as a good way to go. Although instead of taking pills they used Hemlock which is a poison. One author notes “In Western literature, the term ‘drink a cup of hemlock’ has, through shakespeare and others, come to mean the way to rational suicide.” Roman philosopher and statesman, Seneca “ Recommends suicide when old age threatened to to bring undignified decay”. Yet evidence shows that even some of the ancient greeks opposed of it as well. In the 17th century, Francis Bacon was the first to use Euthanasia in a medical context stating the euthanasia he felt while dying was an “easy, painless, happy death.”There is places they have found and seen that show some people being honored for taking their way out instead of living in pain but others showing even if they were in an unbearable pain they would not be honored or loved and missed if they chose to use euthanasia. People felt this way because they say that life is a gift from god. Suicide was viewed as an immoral act of rejecting god’s gift. Enlightened in the eighteenth century...
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...it is morally right to help others die the way they want to. Assisted suicide occurs when a doctor decides to help, or assist, a patient in suicide, usually by prescribing patients medication. One of the most common drugs used by doctors is sleeping pills. The doctor will give the patient sleeping pills and direct the patient to take an excessive amount of them. This ensures that the patient passes away as peacefully as possible (Welsh-Huggins). Many doctors that assist in suicide use pentobarbital, which is a very strong sleeping aid. This pill is always available for prescription use, but very few doctors prescribe it due to the numerous amounts of deaths associated with it. This is part of the reason why many doctors use pentobarbital for assisted suicide. When this medication is taken in excess it ensures a peaceful death while sleeping. Passing away peacefully while sleeping is another reason why assisted suicide should be legal. Some believe that assisted suicide is ideal for patients who are terminally ill and cannot bear the pain any longer. This side of the issue involves the human right to be able to decide the quality and value of life. However, many believe that religion plays a large role in assisted suicide. Individuals that are against assisted suicide believe that God is the...
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...Physician Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia: Shouldn't We Have That Choice? Everest University Online – Tampa/Brandon Abstract Physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia has been a heated debate amongst many people and physicians since the 5th century. Most people do not think about their death or how and when they would like to die, if they were terminally ill. Until people start speaking up about their wishes about how and when they want to die, they will continue to slowly fade away and be in pain during that process. There really needs to be someone to step up and finish where Dr. Kevorkian was forced to stop helping people. There are hundreds, if not thousands of people that die every single day, and those people end up suffering because there is nothing, except conventional pain medications, that ease their pain while dying. While these pain medications do help sometimes, people are still suffering, waiting, and dying a slow death. This is why doctor assisted suicide/euthanasia should be legalized because at the end of their lives, most people do not want to suffer. Shouldn't we be Able to Choose how and When to Die? Have you ever thought about the way you would want to die if you were terminally ill? Most people do not think about things like that. However, if you could actually choose how and when you wanted to die, what choice would you make? If you had a terminal illness and knew that you were going to die very soon, would you want your family to watch you be in pain...
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...Joyce Chen Aaron Lay ENC 1101 12 August 2013 Killing Them Softly Death is an ineluctable phenomenon, but it can be quick, possibly painless, or one can bear insufferable pain. It is stated in the Hippocratic Oath, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a pessary to cause an abortion” (United States). A physician should uphold his or her duty to save a person’s life, even though that person may be in immense amount of pain and rather die. This is where the debate over legalizing euthanasia comes in. Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are very similar, however, dissimilar at the same time. In all technicality, physician-assisted suicide is the active form of euthanasia, and it gained popularity after the largely controversial case of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Comprehending the basic knowledge of euthanasia and its history will help one to understand why euthanasia is not such an unacceptable practice, but also why legalizing euthanasia can benefit many people. Euthanasia is derived from “the Greek word for ‘good death’” (Terri). This “may imply that the Greeks and Romans who coined the term agreed on the basic issues [of euthanasia although,] history shows on us that this is not the case” (McDougall 3). Until Christianity came about, if the person is suffering from immense pain and/or the quality of life is futile, a physician’s duty to kill was equated to the duty to heal. Unfortunately, euthanasia...
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...to end someone’s life due to pain and suffering would make you feel responsible for their death. In Susan Wolf’s situation her father’s health was decling affecting his physical and mental state. She described her father as “a smart, savvy lawyer, the family patriarch. She could see his spark for life start to fade at the end when he could not even read, do the New York Times crossword puzzles he used to knock off in an hour, or even watch television (Wolf, 2008).” At this point she knew her father’s condition was not getting any better, that’s when he said he wanted to stop. There are doctors that are comfortable with assisting suicide like Jack Kevorkian, which were known as “Death Doctors”. “Dr. Kevorkian has been known as “Dr. Death” since at least 1956, when he conducted a study photographing patients’ eyes as they died. Results established that blood vessels in the cornea cornea contract and become invisible as the heart stops beating. In a 1958 paper, he suggested that death row inmates be euthanized, and their bodily organs harvested. In 1960, he proposed using condemned prisoners for medical experiments. In 1989, a quadaplegic, too handicapped to kill himself, publicly asked for assistance, and Dr. Kevorkian began tinkering on a suicide machine. But a different patient – Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old with Alzheimer’s – was the first to test the device. It worked. Kevorkian the provided services to at least 45 and possibly more satisfied customers. In 1997, the U...
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...Should Physician-Assisted suicide be legal? LisAnn Marcum PHI 103 Instructor: Bruce-Alan Barnard September 16, 2013 Should Physician-Assisted suicide be legal? This paper is an argumentative paper on whether it should or should not be legal for a Physician to aid in a patient’s suicide. Physician-assisted suicide transpires when a patient who has a terminal illness wishes to end their suffering and seeks help from their physician in aiding them to do so. This will be a challenging paper that will take a look at whether or not it is legal for a physician to help in assisting a patient’s suicide, if this practice is ethical, moral, and/or unconstitutional. A great deal of the general public feel as though this form of practice is alright because if the patient is suffering then something should be done to help them. On the other hand many feel it should be left up to God to decide when our time is up. In the end it is between the patient and their physician. Physician assisted suicide is a scandalous issue that has remained disputed for centuries. The arguments are still going on in the present day about if it should be ethically accepted. Many feel this kind of action ought to remain being left up to God, others see this argument as though if the patient is in pain and distress shouldn’t something be allowed to be done in order to help them. “Deductive arguments offer reasons to accept a conclusion, and those reasons should provide all information we need to determine...
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