...Withdrawal of aid and terminal sedation are often confused with physician-assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicide is a controversial practice which is not legally protected under the constitution, but may be allowed depending on state. Withdrawal of aid and terminal sedation are both protected under the constitution and therefore are morally acceptable. It is easy to confuse these cases, but it is important to distinguish between them when determining both the ethicality and legality of a case. In Case Study #28 “Death By Dehydration,” 67-year-old Roberta W is an unmarried female, retired teacher, and is cared by her brother and his wife. She suffers from a multitude of different ailments which confine her to bed and make her even the most basic of tasks burdensome. Roberta is weary of her circumstances and regrets being a burden on her brother and his wife, however her brother and wife do not resents her demands and needs. Roberta W expresses that she would rather be dead at one point and has a conversation with her doctor to remove a hernia. Her physician Dr. R tells her that there is a low chance she would survive the hernia surgery due to her emphysema and tells her that no responsible surgeon would operate on her. Possibly in response to Dr. R’s statement, Roberta asks Dr. R to...
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...In cases of life and death philosophizers have a series of ideas and concepts to help bring them to a moral conclusion. In this case there are specifically three different concepts which all have their own ethical views towards the case. In my paper I will be explaining what Foot, Mill, and Kant would have to say in regards to the case. I will focus on providing arguments against Mill and Kant’s theories while in the end accepting Foot’s theory. Foot is well known for her argument rejecting consequentialism. Consequentialism is the view that all that matters is the goodness or badness of an actions consequence. Foot argues that there are things that matter besides the outcome of an action, like the rightness or wrongness of the action. In...
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...from a genetic mutation. Because women have two X chromosomes and men have an X and a Y, women have a fifty percent chance of carrying the gene while men have a fifty percent chance of inheriting the disorder if their mother is a carrier. Although rare, a person may acquire hemophilia. In this instance the immune system attacks the clotting factors in the blood, causing the disorder. This can happen through pregnancy, an autoimmune disorder, cancer, or multiple sclerosis. There are three severities to hemophilia, severe, moderate, and mild. While a normal persons factor VIII levels vary from 50%-150%, a person with hemophilia will have FVIII levels of below 50%. Severe is the most common form of hemophilia with sixty percent of recent cases. People with the severe form of hemophilia have less than one percent of factor VIII levels in their body. Because of their severe lack of factor VII in their body, their symptoms may include continuous bleeding following an injury, brain bleeds, and frequent spontaneous bleeding including into the joints and muscles. People with the moderate form of hemophilia have factor VIII levels of one to five percent. About fifteen percent of patients with hemophilia experience the moderate form. People with moderate hemophilia experience severe bleeding after an injury. They also may experience random bleeding without reason. Twenty five percent of people with hemophilia experience the mild form. A person with mild hemophilia has six to thirty percent...
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...November Nelson has been grieving over the death of her boyfriend Josh Prescott after a pledge stunt gone wrong. Just when she thinks that life can’t get any worse, she discovers that she is pregnant with Josh’s child. She faces the challenge of breaking the news to her mother and the Prescotts. She is faced with the biggest decision that she could ever imagine. When November finally tells her mother, she is understandably upset. November had plans to attend the Black College Tour and an academic summer program. She also had plans to attend Cornell University. Now, she knows that she has to alter her plans. After an outburst in class, November reveals that she is pregnant. It doesn’t take long for the news to get around school. November must endure whispers and criticism from her fellow students. November and her mother have a discussion about what it will take to take care of a baby. Mrs. Nelson tries to help her daughter see that she has left behind a world of having to worry about homework and washing dinner dishes to the world of motherhood. Jericho Prescott has been grieving over the death of his cousin Josh. The pain is more than he can bear and his world is divided into life “before” and “after” Josh. In order to cope, he gives up playing trumpet and decides to go out for the football team. He hopes that the physical pain will suppress his emotional pain. As Jericho faces challenges on the football field, he faces challenges in his love life. His ex-girlfriend Arielle wants...
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...In the early morning of January, 27th, 1983 after a night of drinking, John Snyder returned home to find his girlfriend had left him. Snyder makes a brief phone call to Maritza who is just walking in the door after her night out with friends. The phone call ends with Snyder getting upset and hanging up on Maritza. Between the early morning hours of 3:00 am and 4:30 am, shortly after Abdolraham and Shahrom leave, John Snyder shows up at the girl’s residence either with the .25 semi automatic handgun in his position or retrieving it from under the couch on the porch where he claims he had stored it a few days ago. However, I do not believe Snyder placed the gun under the couch because if Maritza was unaware it was there, it served no purpose...
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...According to the Principle of Beneficence, “Generally, moral agents have the obligation to do good for others.” As her physician and a moral agent in the situation, she was doing what she thought was in the best interest of the patient to benefit her overall wellbeing. Her daughters believed that their mother, having no idea of the terminal illness would benefit her life. The physician and her daughters, saw no harm in telling her that her illness was simply refractory anemia. They did in fact believe that lying to her was in her best...
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...it being considered murder. There is no jail time, life in prison, or death penalty. Believe it or not, this scenario existed in real life. This scenario describes Physician-Assisted Suicide. Physician-Assisted Suicide is currently legal in a few states. There is currently an on going debate to extend its legality to more states and eventually the entire United States. Many people each year are diagnosed with a terminal illness. They are forced to suffer and live in pain until they eventually die naturally. For some people, this could be years, even decades of suffering. This is a long time of suffering that could be avoided. Physician-Assisted Suicide helps these people. People can be put out of their pain and misery. This is highly controversial. Some believe these doctors are murderers. Others call these doctors a saving grace. This is a practice with many ethical questions. Hopefully, after research, I will be able to answer these ethical questions. There are a few other questions that I hope to answer. On being, the states allow Physician-Assisted Suicide. Also, what is New Jersey’s stand on this practice? Lastly, what are the guidelines and requirements to be eligible? As defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Physician Assisted Suicide is...
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...1. Euthanasia is the process of ending a life in order to relieve pain from a suffering patient. I think once if a patient’s family, or it is in their will, euthanasia must be done. Another reason it could be practiced is if the patient is noticeably not there. Even though the neuroimaging my say their brain is reacting, the person might not be there anymore. After watching the video, it made me more hopeful that people who go into a coma state will come out of it, if provide with the right materials. But if it was my family member, I would not want them to suffer. Even if they wake up, they will have a long road ahead of them, filled with a variety of problems. 2. I do believe that patients who are in the vegetative state that show an increase...
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...1. Did I reach the goals set for this interview? To what extent? My goal for the interview was to determine the patient’s safety of my patient. I asked her if she felt like hurting herself or if she had thoughts of suicide. She said, “No”. When I asked her if she thought it was a bad idea to walk down the highway she said, “No, because there weren’t a lot of cars on the highway”. This patient is not safe to reenter the community. 2. What other goals emerged? I should have asked where she lives and who she lives with. I should have asked her about the last time she took a shower or changed her clothes. 3. What factors helped/hindered reaching those goals? She was very willing to answer my question, but it was hard to keep her engaged in the conversation. She was talking a lot about being a model and focusing on fixing the bed sheets. She was easily distract, so I had to keep redirecting her back into the conversation. 4....
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...expressed that he really enjoyed learning more in depth about his family. He mentioned that this experience taught him about more about himself. Tom currently works full time as a spotlight operator in the greater Atlanta area. He graduated from college about a year ago with a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts. After college, he worked three part time jobs until he was hired at his current job. He currently lives in Coweta County with his maternal grandparents. His maternal grandfather has recently been diagnosed with cancer, after being in remission for many years. Tom mentioned that cancer has been prevalent in both paternal and maternal family members for at least two generations. He also mentioned that his paternal great grandmother committed suicide many years ago, but he only learned this recently because it was a “family secret”. His parents are both in their fifties and are still married. His mother is a medical coder and his father is a computer programmer. Tom states that his father began taking medication for what he assumes to be depression about four years ago, but Tom has never really pressed his father or mother for more details. He has one brother who is three years younger and living in South Georgia working full time. There is no history of serious medical issues in his immediate family. My client has never received counseling, and is not sure if other family members have ever received counseling. He is not currently on any medication and has not been diagnosed with any...
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...person who walks down the cold, clinical hallways or sits and waits in the drab and impersonal waiting rooms represents a very human side to the realm of medicine, and each person’s story during the medical process involves many choices by both the physician and the patient. It is important that choices of death are equally respected by physicians as are choices of life, which is why life-ending medication should be accepted legally for all citizens. In terms of “death with dignity”, dignity is considered the choice to live and die at will, without either life or death causing an affront to that dignity. In 1972 Arthur Morgan, then president of Antioch College in Ohio, recounts “[crying]...
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...Josie, a vibrant 18 month old little girl who accidently stepped into a scalding hot bathtub of water. Her mother, Sorrel, heard Josie’s screams and ran upstairs to find her daughter severely burned. Josie’s father, Tony, called 911 and Josie was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital. “Most of all I wonder how I allowed myself to let her out of my sight.” (King p. 21) This is what Sorrel was thinking while she sat next to Josie in the hospital bed. Sorrel felt as if she had failed as a mother; she let her baby get hurt. A mechanic figured out that the water Josie sat in was about 150 degrees fahrenheit. Josie had second-degree burns on sixty percent of her body. The first few days, Josie was on a breathing ventilator and the doctors had to remove the dead tissue from the burn sites. The dressings were changed at least twice a day and they had to perform skin grafts. Josie’s breathing tube was removed and she made great progress as the burns started to heal. Sorrel journaled throughout the whole stay at the hospital. She kept track of the names of anyone who cared for Josie. She would ask them what they were doing to her daughter and wrote it all down. SOrrel stayed by her daughter the whole time and got very involved in the treatment of her daughter. After two weeks, Josie got well enough to move off the PICU floor to the immediate-care unit. This made Sorrel uneasy as she would have to get used to new nurses and doctors. She had formed relationships with a lot of the people involved...
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...nausea, and vomiting as long as the intent is to treat patient symptoms and not to hasten death. PS is a spectrum of interventions where sedatives and opioids are used to relieve the physical pain and distress of a dying patient at the end of life. In some cases, the patient must be sedated into unconsciousness to relieve pain. In these situations PS is legally acceptable when: 1.) the administered medication offers legitimate patient benefit, 2.) the intention is not...
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...Should Physician-assisted suicide be legalized in Canada? Introduction The topic of legalizing Physician-assisted suicide has long been a controversial issue in Canada and has recently received increased attention. In 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the provisions of the Criminal Code prohibiting assisted suicide. Two decades later, the Supreme Court of Canada began to deliberate whether to uphold or strike down the law prohibiting doctor-assisted suicide. Last month, the nine justices of the Supreme Court heard impassioned pleas for overturning Canada’s absolute prohibition against assisted suicide, with proponents arguing laws that consider the act equivalent to murder are a violation of personal autonomy and infringe the Charter of Rights and Freedom that provides for “life, liberty and security of the person” (Connor, 2014). The hearing sparked fresh debates across the country. Opponents argue that legalizing physician-assisted suicide would lead society down a dangerous "Slippery Slope" that leads to involuntary euthanasia and the killing of people who are thought undesirable. In addition, opponents argue that legalizing physician-assisted suicide gives too much power to doctors and it may reduce the availability of palliative care. The aim of this paper is to make a comprehensive argument in favor of physician-assisted suicide. Physician-Assisted suicide & Euthanasia Physician-assisted suicide occurs for any situation where doctors use drugs or other methods...
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...Physicians-Assisted Suicide Physician-Assisted Suicide is a medical process where a physician supplies a terminally ill patient with a prescription for one dose of lethal medication. The prescription is given to a patient upon request only if the patient intends to end his or her own life because of suffrage from a terminal illness. Today, physicians-assisted suicide is more commonly known as the Death-With-Dignity Act. Recent stories of patients who have attempted to end their own life by lethal medication have made countless headlines concerning the topic throughout many informational sources. Currently, the states of Washington, Oregon, and Vermont are the only three states that have adopted the Death-With-Dignity Act. Physician-Assisted Suicide is among many practices that aid in ending a patient’s life along with DNR’s, DNI’s, and AND’s, when life-sustaining treatments are denied. Physicians-Assisted Suicide is much more controversial than other life ending methods because it enables a patient to end her or her own life in a way that many individuals feel is immoral and unethical. The ethical issues of physicians-assisted suicide are both emotional and controversial, yet healthcare workers deal with a request for this alternative every day. Is physicians-assisted suicide the answer? The question doesn’t come by an easy answer. However, both sides of the debate, either for it or against it, provide strong, concrete points that help truly uncover where the controversy lies...
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