Physician-Assisted Suicide
Suffering has always been a part of human existence. Request to end suffering by means of death through both physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia have occurred since the beginning of medicine. By definition, assisted suicide is a type of active euthanasia in which a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means of death to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act. Usually by prescribing a lethal dose of drugs but the patient is responsible for performing the final act (Codes of Ethics). Even though physician- assisted suicide is illegal, many people and doctors believe that it should be legal to help terminally ill people at the end of their life while others believe it is against their beliefs and religion to commit any type of suicide. This paper is going to show why doctor assisted suicide should be legalized because at the end of their lives, most people do not want to suffer.
Only a terminal ill patient is really aware of what it is like to experience intractable suffering; even with pain relievers. Those who have not experiences it cannot fully appreciate what effect it has on quality of life. Apart from physical pain, overcoming the emotional pain of losing independence is an additional factor that only the patient comprehends fully. In medicine prolongation of living may sometimes turn into prolongation of dying. Why should be a patient be forced experience a slow death? Many families don’t want to see their loved ones suffer and the patient doesn’t want them to suffer either. Physician-assisted suicide provides an option to end a life before it even enters the terminal “death-bed” stage of suffering, or it allows families to choose to end a “death bed” existence with dignity and peace instead of simply pulling the plugs to, in some cases, starve their loved one to death.
The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that a person should have the right to choose when to die, if it were for the right reasons. Throughout antiquity, there was widespread support for voluntary death as opposed to prolonged agony, and physicians complied by giving their patients the poisons they requested (Suicide & Ethical Aspects, 2010). Modern society, however, is intent on removing the freedom of a terminally ill person to face death in a way he chooses. According to the constitution, an individual has certain unalienable rights, one of those being the pursuit of happiness. This right allows a person to pursue a certain quality of life within the guidelines of happiness. When a terminal illness diminished or extinguished this quality, an individual should have the right to end his life in a controlled manner.
Assistance in suicide is a crime in most places but I think it should be a legal option for terminally ill patients throughout the United States. This is a human way for terminally ill to end their lives with dignity and without the shame and suffering. Three states have leaded the way and have allowed physician assisted suicide. Oregon was the first state to pass a law allowing doctors to help end their terminally ill patient’s lives, with the 1997 Death with Dignity Act. Washington was the second state to follow in 2008, with the Washington Death with Dignity Act. Montana is the third state that has a physician assisted suicide law. However, there is a list of requirements a patient must pass before being able to consider to follow through with this enactment.
When it comes to the subject of physician assisted suicide there is a thin and controversial line between what’s considered to be wrong and right in physician-assisted suicide. For instance, withdrawing life support is not considered killing although physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia are both classified otherwise. There are many opinions on the subject such as ethics and legality issues. Ethics plays a huge role in the decision making process of physician-assisted suicide. Some may say that this destroys societal respect for life. Some opponent of physician-assisted suicide argue that permitting some assisted suicides may lead to taking an individual’s right to live. “According to repeated reports on Dutch euthanasia, at least 1,000 patients are killed each year who did not ask to die” (Physician-Assisted Suicide” 42). This “slippery slope” argument expresses a utilitarian rational for prohibiting assistance.
One reason that just about everyone who favors physician assisted suicide agrees with is that a person had a right to take decisions about his life and death. In principles of biomedical ethics this concept is stated as the respect for the autonomous choices of a person. Autonomy- independence and the right of self-determination, is certainly valued in modern society and patients do, and should, have the right to accept or reject medical treatment. However, those who favor assisted suicide claim that autonomy extends to the right of a patient to decide when, where, how and why to die. A person dying from cancer or in emotional and physical pain of Alzheimer’s disease would greatly appreciate being able to end their pain and suffering. It is their right to quit waiting and go through with making physician-assisted suicide decision. Life is precious and it is worth a fight. It is when the fight is clearly hopeless and the agony, physical and mental, is unbearable that a final exit is an option.
On the other side of the issue, however, people who are against assisted suicide do not believe that the terminally ill have the right to end their suffering. They argue that suicide and the assistance of suicide is “evil” and that the fabric of social morality will be damaged by sanctioning them. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide contend that there is no guarantee that it will be strictly voluntary. Organizations such as the American Medical Association have successfully passed policies opposing PAS. “Many times the number of patients die from withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment and pain relief that hastens death than from a physician-assisted suicide” (Physician-Assisted Suicide” 64.) The potential for subtle coercion will threaten from several angles. Family members’ faced with the overwhelming burden of caring for an ill person may unconsciously impart a feeling of worthlessness, which accelerates a “voluntary” decision toward Physician-assisted suicide. Furthermore, it is argued whether physician-assisted suicide in an obligation to relieve the suffering of our fellow human beings and to respect their dignity. Supporters of legislation legalizing assisted suicide claim that all persons have a moral right to choose freely to take decisions about their lives as long as they inflict no harm on others. For most people, the right to end one’s life is a right they can easily exercise, but there are many who want to die but whose disease, handicap, or condition renders them unable to end their lives in a dignified manner. I think when such people ask for assistance in exercising their right to die, their wishes should be respected.
Religious conservatives are one of the main groups opposing this act of Physician-assisted suicide. Although opponents of PAS think that only God has the right to decide when a person has to die, I think such a person has a right to end their suffering and pain by their own. One of the biggest benefits of PAS is that a person can stop their suffering and pain. There are many unhealed diseased such as cancer or multiple sclerosis that leads to pain and agonized death. Some patients suffer from vomiting, coughing, and extreme pain for long time. They just wait until their body gives up and pray, so they won’t wake up tomorrow. The patients know that pain is going to get worse and worse because there is no cure. Physician’s duty is to help people to get well. If cure is impossible, he has to serve patients’ best interests and does whatever is possible to relieve suffering. Sometimes physician-assisted suicide remains the only option for a patient to end their endless pain.
Further, a dying person’s physical suffering can be most unbearable to that person’s immediate family. Medical technology has failed to save a loved- one. But, successful or not, medicine has a high price attached to it. The financial costs of life support are huge. A single day of life support costs many thousands of dollars. These expenses fall on individual payers, insurance companies, health plans, and governments. All such payers face difficult decisions regarding the allotment of money for such treatment, especially in cases that are likely to be futile. In certain cases, the patient’s family may be spending its own retirement or saving money on the patient’s medical treatments. In other cases, the patient may be spending his or her own money; money that family members may feel should be going toward their inheritance. These are very real financial motives and we cannot as a society condone or consider legalizing physician-assisted suicide as long as these economic pressures exist.
Finally, after analyzing the reasoning for love ones right to die with dignity, it can be concluded that physician-assisted suicide should be legalized and openly practiced by our government. Choosing the right to assisted suicide would be a final exercise of autonomy for the dying. Physician-assisted suicide is a choice that patients should be allowed to consider and one that the family should respect, regarding them. They should not be seen as people who are waiting to die but as human beings making one final active choice in their lives. This also gives the patient an option to stop long-suffering, and the “Freedom to die with Dignity.”

References: http://public.health.oregon.gov/ProviderPartnerResources/EvaluationResearch/DeathwithDignityAct/Pages/index.aspx http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199611283352227 http://www.patientsrightscouncil.org/site/assisted-suicide-the-continuing-debate/ http://www.ascensionhealth.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=26&Itemid=139
http://www.cfainstitute.org/ETHICS/CODES/ETHICS/Pages/index.aspx