...Why do some agree with Physician-assisted suicide? PHI 208 Ethics and Moral Reasoning May 23, 2016 Physicians have been assisting people in committing suicide for many years by using methods of lethal injections. Assisted suicide is a step method in assisting someone to end their existence and is legal in Oregon, Vermont, and Washington State. James Rachel; 1941-2003 has argued for euthanasia (from the Greek for “good death” or the right to die and euthanasia is a practice of intentionally ending someone life to help relieve suffering and pain. Euthanasia has rising troubling questions in ethics due to it being out of the norm such as eating and doing ordinary activities. When a person is almost certain to die in any given amount of time and is suffering from a life threating painful disease such as a brain tumor, cancer at stage five should be allowed to use Physician assisted suicide. The cost of the medication and treatments are very costly to someone with limited health insurance and having their family members watching them suffer. This argument would support physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and is a little different from euthanasia. (PAS), physician assisted suicide, a doctor will provide a patient with a lethal amount of medication which will cause death to the patient. Certain countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium have made this process legal. In the United States Oregon legalized (PAS) physician assisted suicide in 1997 and the Supreme Court...
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...Euthanasia Originally, the term "physician assisted suicide" meant the provision by a physician of the means of which a suffering, terminally ill patient could initiate his or her death. The "euthanasia" means the killing of a terminally ill person to end his or her suffering. Now, by practice, the term "physician assisted suicide" has been expanded in meaning to include the administration of a lethal substance by a physician to a suffering patient-a form of euthanasia. Thus, physician assisted suicide can now be defined as any action taken by a physician to provide death to a patient. Many people argue that the decision to kill oneself is a private choice which society has no right to be concerned about. This position assumes that suicide results from competent people making autonomous, rational decision to die, and then claims that society has no business "interfering" with a freely chosen life or death decision that harms no one other the suicidal individual. However, according to experts, who have studied several cases on suicide, the basic assumption is wrong. It is very unlikely that someone with serious disability commits suicide. Rather, as society view seriously disabled and terminally ill individuals as burdens with unacceptable quality of life, these persons may feel an obligation to commit suicide. A careful 1974 British study, which involved extensive interviews and examination of medical records, found that 93% of those studied who committed suicide...
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...Assisted Suicide PHI 200: Mind and Machine Physician Assisted Suicide Physician assisted suicide is the common term whereby a physician, at the request of a terminally ill patient, assists the patient in voluntarily ending their own life. Assistance can mean providing one with the means (drugs or equipment) to end their own lives, but may extend to other actions. There are currently three states in the US which allow physician assisted suicide as well as a handful of countries. Global public debate has been ongoing for decades, centering on legal, religious, and moral conceptions of suicide and a personal right to death. “In some religious contexts, while a suicide is considered to be an offense made out of unknowing, confusion, or despair, assisted suicides are ostensibly actions made in faith, with no expectation of incurred sin or such that would bar transcendence to an afterlife”. In certain religious denominations, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, suicides are considered a serious sin. So, many Catholics oppose the practice of assisted suicide. For years, doctors have been prohibited from assisting patients to end their own lives. There are many arguments for and against assisting terminally ill patients to remain in control of their own destiny. Should a terminally ill patient be able to commit suicide? Proponents of patients’ rights argue that patients have the right to die...
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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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...Physician Assisted Suicide: Appropriate or Atrocious How much pain can a patient withstand until they feel that they can not take it anymore? Will physician assisted suicide be viewed as something positive rather than a deadly sin? The procedure taken with physician assisted suicide has become one of the most debatable topics since the unjust acts done by Dr. Kevorkian. Dr. Kevorkian was a doctor in medicine who would grant anyone death that seeks it. This story has traveled around the world and time to where it affects the decision of assisted suicide being legal. No one wants to see a slippery slope occur to where it is just another category for murder. In the United States, physician assisted suicide has become legal in five states: Oregon, California, Vermont, Washington and Montana. This is where licensed doctors perform a procedure in assisting a patient with suicide. Within those states, this is only an option not a misfortune. However, society has viewed this topic to be either unethical and morally wrong or something that can help with the terminally ill patients suffering in a hospital. For a doctor to assist the terminally ill in death, it can not be something to be frowned upon. Physician...
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...Gilbert S Teniente March 16,2009 Euthanasia The different between the legal aspects of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide can be looked at by two different sides. The terminally ill patient should be allowed to end their lives with dignity, physician assisted suicide is a compassionate solution to human suffering, and should not be criminalized, and that doctors be in the business of saving lives not ending them. Allowing physician to aid in suicide makes them accomplices in an immoral and unethical act. Every individual has dominion over their body and should be allowed to decide when to end their life. To achieve that end, with dignity and without pain doctors should be allowed to aid terminal patients by providing necessary dose of drugs. The only other place in the world that currently have legalized euthanasia are Columbia, Japan, and Netherlands. Many pro life activists believe that the choice between life and death belongs to God, not to an individual. Our society today does not condone suicide under any circumstances and there is no moral difference in this case. In addition it is felt that many terminally ill patients suffering extreme pain may want to live or die. The role of doctors in this complex...
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...Davy Reteno Linda Johnson Burgess English 135: Advanced composition Life or Death: the practice of Euthanasia Euthanasia is a very complex and difficult issue to comprehend, partially because of how it is described by religion, the government, and just your ethical motives behind euthanasia. Although people are open minded to using euthanasia when they are terminally ill or suffer of such problems were death would be better than life, the great majority of people, including politicians, priests, and doctors have many moral objections to the topic. Euthanasia is as a matter of fact, humanly wrong, and goes against civilizations most sacred laws. Thus, what is Euthanasia? Legalizing euthanasia is an important step towards person’s freedom? Euthanasia is also known as mercy killing. What euthanasia simply gives is a better ending to those patients who seem to not have any deserving end. There are various ways of practicing it, and many definitions around it have born. A pro-euthanasia group defines assisted suicide as when someone provides the means (drugs or other agents) by which a person can take his or her own life. There also exists what is called as physician-assisted suicide, in which a doctor prescribes lethal drugs in order to free the patient from there unbearable life. Medical professional codes have long prohibited physician involvement in assisting a patient's suicide. However, despite ethical and legal prohibitions, calls for the liberalization...
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...Argument Essay Rough Draft Local Views and Legislation of Euthanasia Euthanasia is defined in Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary as; “1. Dying easily, quietly, and painlessly. 2. The act of willfully ending life in individuals with an incurable disease. Ethical considerations of this act are being actively debated. One difficulty is how will the physician or society determine that the time for acting to kill the patient has come.” (Taber, Pg. 683). I choose this particular dictionary to reference the definition of euthanasia specifically because of the detailed explanation that ethical considerations are being actively debated. Some may contend that euthanasia is a practice to be upheld in the U.S.A. due to being a country of freedom and liberty, and that is kind to allow one’s suffering to stop. However, others remain opposed and stand firm on the notion that assisting death is unethical, un-Godly, and to be illegal. The debate of assisted-suicide is argumentative amongst society, doctors, and legislators in Hawaii and throughout the nation; with recent regards to changing current law, euthanasia should remain to be illegal. Assisting in death, encouraging death, and advocating for death is wrong in many ways. Societal opinions differ and are found to be expressed throughout Hawaii in organizations, churches, and personal testimonials. What causes one to even think that assisted suicide is an acceptable foreseeable option? An example pros for debate is the notion...
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...3 years your Mother’s health has been deteriorating from an incurable disease. She has been in and out of the hospital with no improvement and is now unable to eat, has lost all control of bodily functions, depressed and continually yells out in agony from the pain she is in. She begs you to help her, that she cannot endure this excruciating pain and miserable life any longer. The doctors tell you there is nothing else they can do for her at this time, that you should keep her comfortable and enjoy her while she is here. How would you feel, what would you do? Euthanasia by definition means the act or practice of killing hopelessly sick or injured individuals (as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Many people are not familiar with this word, but are familiar with the name Dr. Kevorkian, the doctor who helped terminally ill people end their lives. He believed anti-euthanasia was pro- torture. He was reported as saying “I’m trying to knock the medical profession into accepting its responsibilities, and those responsibilities include assisting their patients with death.” (Schneider, Keith, 2011). He was sentenced to over 60 years for his efforts and eventually all his charges were dropped. The debate on legalizing assisted- suicide has been an ongoing issue for decades, but the U.S. government has refused to recognize this as something that needs to be addressed. At this moment Oregon, Washington and...
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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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...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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...Legalize Physician-Assisted Suicide Stacy L. Free Top of Form PHI103: Informal Logic (ACL1248D) Instructor: Stephen CarterBottom of Form January 14, 2013 Legalize Physician-Assisted Suicide “To be or not to be ” the infamous question brought about by Shakespeare in his famous play called Hamlet (No Sweat Shakespeare, 2004-2013) begged Hamlet to question whether to exist or not exist. As in the play, there are people who have struggled to answer this question throughout human history. In modern times a debate has sprung regarding the sickly who are terminally ill. Although some believe that physician-assisted suicide should not be legalized because it is a moral issue that they maintain is unnecessary and what it boils down to a lack of physician training that puts undue pressure on patients to opt for suicide, the procedure should be legalized because, when death is imminent, people should not be limited by laws that affect their basic human rights, forcing them to live in agonizing pain due to inadequate medical services, and allow them to die with dignity. If physician-assisted suicide were legalized then terminally ill people would be relieved from having to endure unnecessary pain and suffering when, even with medical intervention, the patient is forced to endure an agonizing demise. Assisting in more than 130 terminally ill patient suicides between 1990 and 1998, Dr. Jack Kevorkian believed that terminally ill patients should be allowed to determine...
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...generally either for the legalization of physician assisted suicide under very specific conditions or against any form of it altogether. Both sides of the debates present arguments that take into consideration the oral, medical, and ethical implications of their decisions. In the United States, it is not a crime to take one’s own life. But the question is: is there a point when it should be legal for a physician to assist someone in taking their life? Physician Assisted suicide should be a legal option for terminally ill patients....
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...such as advanced cancers, diabetes, lung disease, and Alzheimer’s, leading to a slow death for most (Gardner, 2012). This places a great financial burden on the Medicare system as well as patient’s families. Atul Gawande (2010) reports that twenty five percent of all Medicare spending is for the five percent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months, which is of little apparent benefit (p. 3). Even more concerning is the suffering that many patients are forced to endure due to the lack of other options. Patients must have the right to make autonomous decisions regarding the end of their lives. They need to be confident that those decisions will be upheld, even if they conflict with the wishes of their families or physicians. However, patient confidence in knowing that their final wishes will be met is complicated by a lack of education and empowerment for those who face these difficult decisions (Frank & Anselmi, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to discuss the benefits to patient autonomy and the Medicare budget, by the legalization of physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia. Legalizing Euthanasia: A Practical Approach Imagine that your beloved pet suffered a stroke and could no longer eat, drink, walk, or care for itself the way it had been able to do previously. Would you have a feeding tube inserted into him and care for his every personal need? The answer to this question may...
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...In my opinion, Physician-assisted suicide should not be permissible for the reason that, as a Christian, I believe that if a physician participate in helping take a life, they are guilty of committing a murder. I am against the practice of assisting people take their lives due to my beliefs, and besides, I believe that helping them in the process, I will be committing a murder. “Thou shall not kill” (Exodus 20:13). I disagree that under no circumstances, physician should assist a patient in helping them commit a murder, no matter the condition. In the case of terminal illnesses (diseases that are untreatable), I believe that the patient, can pray to God for help. Either, in curing the disease, or ending your pain and suffering. We also see...
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