...Physician Assisted Suicide Physician Assisted Suicide Introduction A lot of people have very complicated medical conditions that are not reversible. Health of these people deteriorates as they head towards an imminent journey of death. They suffer a lot and live in constant pain. In the course of their suffering, these people may plead for their suffering to be ended by asking their doctors to terminate their lives. In other words, they wish for a physician assisted suicide. This makes people want to end the misery of these suffering people, and they feel that physician assisted suicide should be legalized. Therefore, a lot of people have risen to advocate for physician assisted suicide. However, physician assisted suicide should not be legalized as it is a form of killing, which puts human life to an end. Terminating the life of a person to end his/her physical suffering will only increase the number of deaths. A lot of people also feel that psychological suffering should also be included in the list. Protect Life All people in the society have a moral duty to preserve and protect lives of human beings. Therefore, people should never be allowed to assist in ending the lives of others. This is because by allowing people to end lives of others, the society will destroy the fundamental duty of valuing human life. The society also feels that people have a responsibility to make lives of suffering people worth living (De Ville, 2001). People should not end lives of the...
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...Some would contest the belief that assisted suicide is should be allowed by saying it is morally wrong. In the Netherlands, assisted suicide is allowed. One law pertaining to assisted suicide says that children with disabilities are allowed to be killed at the request of parents (Smith). It is estimated that around 1,000 patients are killed a year that do not ask to die (Smith). In the case that the person has lost means of communication the decision will be made for him or her. Many are afraid that allowing more restricted laws elsewhere will eventually lead to these more extreme laws such as in the United States (US). Those who are pro-assisted suicide would agree the death of children and individuals who cannot communicate should not...
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...seek for suicide assistance in form of prescriptions for lethal drugs to help them terminate their lives. Such patients have undergone extreme pain that they are left with no options rather to beg to die. This is an illusion to some critics who preach about the sanctity of life. This paper intends to explore on legalizing Physician Assisted Suicide for terminally ill patients with certain guidelines. Introduction According to Birnbacher (2008), the question of legalizing physician assisted suicide still generates great debate. These two scholars have added their voice to the debate by stressing that physician assisted suicide should be permissible medical caregivers. This should only be possible under certain and considerable conditions. Manning (1998) also argued that some diseases are quite traumatizing. The patients tend to face extreme suffering that even doctors can seldom extend their olive branch. For instance, when an individual is suffering from incurable syndromes that press them to the extreme throughout their life, then euthanasia should be allowed (Snyder, 2002). This showed that physician assisted suicide could relieve such patients from the suffering. Based on the debate on physical assisted suicide, the proponents of the debate have appealed for legalizing physical assisted suicide. Their arguments have basically been founded on principle of autonomy (Birnbacher, 2008). The supporters have maintained that terminally ill patients should be provided...
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...Physician assisted suicide has been a major debate worldwide for many years. Some individuals don’t realize how hard it is to accept assisted suicide on a grand level. The hardest questions around assisted suicide is not whether it is accepted or not, but if accepted, how and who it will be implement for. This paper will not discuss why assisted suicide should or should not be implemented, but will explain political and societal questions that may arise if assisted suicide is accepted. There will also be given real examples of individuals who completed assisted suicide and possible questions that can arise from them. This paper will also explain how assisted suicide has only a minor effect on nursing care. Once the answers to these questions...
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...Physician-assisted suicide is best defined as the patient’s voluntary choice to take their own life by ingesting lethal medication prescribed by a doctor. The terms euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are often used interchangeably; however, there are differences in these two practices. As clarified by the Right to Die Societies, euthanasia requires an active role in the patient’s death, such as an injection administered by a medical professional. Physician-assisted suicide is best defined as an inactive role. The physician writes a prescription that would ultimately terminate the life of the patient (worldrtd.net). The medication is specifically adapted to precipitate death and to minimize suffering. This controversial topic has been highly debated across the world. As enumerated by Stacey Burling in her article, laws to legalize physician-assisted suicide have already been enacted in 5 states across the U.S.: Oregon, Washington, Montana, Vermont, and California. Euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide is also legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg,...
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...Assisted Suicide Suffering from an illness that is terminal can last weeks, months and even years, or it can take one massive decision on taking yourself away from the pain with assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is when a patient that is terminally ill, and qualifies for the procedure, asks for medication to take their own life to stop the pain. In the United Sates, forty six states do not give the option for assisted suicide, which means there are millions of people suffering from incurable illnesses, waiting to die. Many people try killing themselves on their own, because they are not a citizen of a state that allows assisted suicide. I believe that killing yourself unassisted is worse than killing yourself with provided medication. Assisted suicide should be legal, because it allows suffering people to decide when they want to overcome the pain. Assisted suicide is not like any ordinary suicide. It is a suicide to relieve pain from a patient who only has so long to live. To receive assisted suicide, the patient has to qualify to all of the requirements. Out of the four states that have legalized assisted suicide, three of them involve the same requirements. Oregon was the first state to legalize assisted suicide on November 8, 1994. “An adult who is capable of making choices, is a resident of Oregon, and has been determined by the attending physician and consulting physician to be suffering from a terminal disease, and who had voluntarily expressed his or her life in...
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...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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...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...
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...euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide? Voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are similar. Forms of assisted suicide involve the guidance and supervision of a licensed physician. There is a difference between euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicides’ preparation is when, “A doctor’s helping their distressed patient to commit suicide at the patient’s autonomous appeal” (Varelius, 2013). Euthanasia, on the other hand, “consists of administering lethal medication to the patient,” by the licensed physician (Varelius, 2013). There are countless numbers of questions and concerns about an individual’s quality of life. Under no circumstances, suicide is never the ideal way for an individual to die. However, if physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia were legal and regulated in all states, then the United States Constitution may salvage lives by giving people the right to elect how they wish to die. This is a matter of legal issues, moral issues, and...
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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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...Whether or not euthanasia commonly referred to as physician assisted suicide should be allowed has been an issue of much debate over the last couple of decades. By definition euthanasia is 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 [1]. As Americans it should be our civil liberty to die on our own terms. A patient suffering at the end of life deserves the right to choose how their life should end with no government involvement in the decision. Clearly, legalizing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide would not undermine the quality of palliative care that patients receive. As Americans it should be our civil liberty to die on our own terms. While physician assisted suicide is legal in three states Oregon (via the Oregon Death with Dignity Act), Washington (by Washington Death with Dignity Act), and Montana (through the 2009 trial court ruling Baxter v. Montana)[2] it is still not available to all citizens of the united states . To me this is a clear violation of our civil liberties as American citizens. Physician assisted suicide is not an irresponsible practice. The states that are authorized to perform physician assisted suicide have many safe guards in place that ensure the decision being made by the patient is not being made irrationally or hastily. In Oregon the patient must be of sound mind when they request a prescription for a lethal dose of medication...
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...Assisted suicide is a very controversial issue with numbers of pros and cons that can affect both national and international codes of ethics. Assisted suicide is emotional and controversial which ranks up there with abortion. The main thing we need to come up with is that is it morally ethical to kill someone even if the person is in pain. And there is way we can answer that without stating all the pros and cons it comes with. Let's start by saying that it goes against religious views and also against medical ethics if it is the doctor or nurse doing the assisted suicide. If the patient is suffering at the end of his life people have the right not to suffer. It should be considered as much of a crime to make someone live who with justification does not wish to continue as it is to take life without consent. Activists often claim that the laws against assisted suicide are government mandated suffering. But this claim would be similar to saying that laws against selling contaminated food are government mandated starvation. Laws against assisted suicide are in place to prevent abuse and to protect people from dishonest doctors and others. They are not, and never have been, intended to make anyone suffer. The legal right to die some people refer to the liberty interest implicated in right to die cases as a liberty interest in committing suicide we described it as the right to die and determining the time and the manner of one's death and hastening ones death for an important...
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... 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 situation is to provide medical treatment when possible...
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...Physician-assisted suicide is a controversial issue at the forefront of American society. The idea is that if someone has been diagnosed with a terminal illness they should have the option to end their own life through a quick and painless drug administered by a physician. Many terminally ill patients believe this gives them a sense of control and gives them an option to end the pain of dealing with their illness. The opposition of physician-assisted suicide are those who believe that suicide is immoral and forcing a physician to administer this procedure would unfair. While many are now in favor of physician-assisted suicide there are still those who oppose it for moral or religious reasons. Many believe that the practice is morally wrong because it...
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...explicit demand, normally practised by physiscians with pharmaceutical additives. Indirect euthanasia describes the medical therapy to avoid unendurable pain under accepting a shorter life expactancy. The third way is passive euthanasia, which implies the abdication of life prolonging measures. The fourth and last method of euthanasia is medically assisted suicide. In fact, this stands for giving someone the possibility to commit suicide, whereas the patient has to do the last step on his own. To discuss and describe the different ways of euthanasia in a good way, we want to take a closer look to Europe, especially to the Netherlands, Switzerland and Germany. This selection is based on the fact, that there are the three major types of handling euthanasia with the corresponding judical solution in each country. In the Netherlands it is legal to practise active euthanasia by a physician with the corresponding legal regulations. The law says that physicians are allowed to practice active euthanasia if the patient has offered the explicit, permanent, not influenced, well considered and free will to die. Further more, the physician has to prove and confirm that the patient´s suffer is constant, unendurable and that there is no chance to heal him. After this detailed conversation...
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