Questions surrounding Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician assisted suicide is a constant source of debate in our society. In order to gain insight into the workings, social questions, and political questions physician assisted suicide, physician suicide must be defined. In order for physician assisted suicide to occur, “a doctor and a terminally ill patient whose death is likely to occur in a short time” are required (Robinson, 2010, p. 15). Furthermore, examination of the roles of the doctor and the patient must be explored. For the doctor’s role or the physician assisted portion, “the doctor prescribes a drug that should cause the patient’s death shortly after it is taken” (Robinson, 2010, p. 15). The role of the patient takes place …show more content…
Those that are against physician assisted suicide believe that “the sanctity of life, the protection of those who are vulnerable to medical or family abuses, the ‘common good’ and the ethical integrity of the medical professional are variously seen as competing values that in fact outweigh individual autonomy” (Salem, 1999, p. 31). A social perspective is added when examining the underlying fundamentals of physician assisted suicide, as “it is conceived as an intimate, existential act” yet “the decision to take death into one’s own hands has been construed as an act that is not simply personal, private, and solitary, but contrary to social norms and expectations” (Salem, 1999 p. 31). This is to say that even though the act of physician assisted suicide involves a very intimate, private relationship between physician and patient, it is a huge social issue that everyone has an opinion about. This means that “in the context of physician-assisted suicide the individual ‘drops into’ a system that recognizes and must even authorize this particular (ostensibly private) choice. In other words, “displacing suicide from the private arena to bring it under medicine’s stewardship means surrendering suicide to the (medical) ‘establishment’” (Salem, 1999, p. 32). This impedes on the concept of autonomy, as “assisted suicide requires the connivance of others (direct from doctors, indirect from society)” (Salem, …show more content…
A medical judgment “is a medical evaluation of the fairness and legitimacy of a person’s (not simply a patient’s desire or choice to end his or her life” (Salem, 1999, pg. 33). This comes with the notion that medical judgment should have “the need to establish protocols and guidelines to prevent abuses, protect the vulnerable, guarantee public accountability, and even to assure the autonomous character of the patient’s choice” (Salem, 1999, pg. 33). Concepts of protocols and guidelines, whether or not it requires a physician to make these decisions, and the different relationships between physicians and patients combined with the idea of intimate decisions vs. social decisions all highlight the strain and differences between autonomy, medical judgment, culture, social factors, and the medicalization of