Physician-assisted suicide is one of many strongly debated topics in our society. In the 1990’s, Dr. Jack Kevorkian was brought to trial for his assistance with terminally ill individuals suicide. Since Dr. Kevorkian’s 1990 case, where he was convicted for first degree murder, voters in three states have considered ballot initiatives that would legalize some form of physician-assisted dying, and in 1994 Oregon became the first state to approve such a measure. Several surveys indicate that roughly two thirds of the American public now support physician-assisted suicide, as do more than half the doctors in the U.
S. during physician-assisted suicide, the individual kills themselves and in euthanasia the doctor injects a lethal dose into the individual killing that person instantly. We all have the right to live or die, and doctors also have the right to take part in the Hippocratic Oath, which is a moral code for doctors to uphold their work in the best interest of the individual or patient. Physician assisted suicide should be legal, because everyone should have the right to choose to suffer or not. Some patients experience terrible suffering that cannot be comforted by any medicines or a nurses’ care.
Those patients then seek for a quick and easy solution to not feel the pain anymore, death. Doctors and society alike must recognize the patient’s right to autonomy, and that is deciding what will or won’t be done to his or her body. Patients have the free will to die or want to die, then that patient can been examined by an expert, where he or she will be found competent enough to make decisions for himself or herself. Some patients decide to suppress life sustaining treatments, because they feel their life is a burden and wish to end their life.
One of the most important ethical principles in medicine is to respect the patient’s self-rule. If a patient’s autonomy was not granted, then his or her free will would be in question. The patient always has the right to what he or she wishes to be done to them or not, not the doctor. The history of our law’s action on assisted suicide continues to reject and permit any of its efforts. It brings into concept the Due Process Clause, which sates, “No person shall…be deprived of life, liberty, or property without the due process of law.
” The Due Process Clause means that the government cannot punish people without performing on the authority of a written law. So a police officer cannot throw someone into jail just because he feels like it. He must have evidence that he or she broke a written law, and then he may discipline that person according to the degree that the law identifies. The Due Process Clause does not side with physician assisted suicide. In the European Declaration of Human Rights, it states the right not to be forced to suffer. Americans should be allowed this same right, which relates to the eighth amendment.
The eighth amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Any doctor who truly cared for the well-being of the patient would know that, the patient is already feeling dead on the inside and suffering from a pain that has no cure, which is why suicide is on their mind. The patient is already in distress from physical changes in his or her life, so he or she feels inadequate and not like their real selves anymore. That is why those patients think of suicide or lethal injections. If killing someone who is in discomfort who did indeed want to die, is a crime, then so is forcing someone in that same position to live.
Many people know that death is cruel and not fair, but this must be recognized by everyone. There are many laws today against euthanasia and assisted suicide. Those laws are in place to avert abuse and defend people and patients from unrestrained doctors. Russel Ogden M. A. wrote an article called, “The Better Pill,” in which he explains of hearing these very unpleasant stories of patients who consumed lethal quantities of drugs that would usually kill people, yet that patient would survive. Then there would be a long and drawn out pain of vomiting or brain damage.
A BBC report stated that one in five patients had an uneasy death, according to the doctors who assisted those patients suffering from their fatal sicknesses. The same study revealed that in 16% of those cases where medication was given to murder the patient, and it did not result as intended. Consuming these dosages would be more painful to the patient now and the patient could suffer from a lingering death that may sometimes last for hours. Assisted suicide is a form of killing, which is always wrong. Assisted suicide is not necessary. All suffering can be relieved if care givers are sufficiently skilled and compassionate.
The Hippocratic Oath is an oath doctor’s take, which prohibits killing a human being and aiding that person in suicide. This oath protects the welfare of the patients by making them swear that they will fulfill their patient’s autonomy and protect the patient from harm and injustice. However, if that patient is in harm, it would be unjust to not to put the patient out of his or her misery if that’s what the patient wanted. Even the highest ethical imperative of doctors should be to provide care in whatever way best serves patients’ interest, in accord with each patient’s wish.
If a patient requests help with suicide and the doctor believes the request is appropriate, requiring someone else to provide the assistance would be a form of abandonment. It has been emphasized that if the physician-assisted suicide was legalized, it would give doctors a license to kill, and these doctors would then be names murderers. Yet when doctors stop ventilators at a patient’s request, those doctors are not branded as killers. They are thanked for their good works for not letting the patient suffer any longer than he or she needed to be.
The Hippocratic Oath is repeated by doctors who swear to always protect and care for his teachers and patients. The Hippocratic Oath also pledges to never take part in euthanasia and abortion, yet those are both legal forms of killing someone. Meanwhile this oath teaches physicians to not offer their patient with a “deadly drug. ” Depressed patients would seek physician-assisted rather than help for their depression. The poor, disabled, and elderly might be coerced to request it by family members or even doctors. Assisted suicide would be a threat to the economically and socially vulnerable.
The Hippocratic Oath has been modified many times from the original oath from Hippocrates, because less and less of its creeds are accepted. The exclusion of not killing the patient is the first promise in this oath and if it was broken, doctors might also break other rules. Many arguments are put forward for maintaining the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide, but I believe they are outweighed by two fundamental principles that support ending the prohibition: patient autonomy (the right to control one’s own body), and the physician’s duty to relieve suffering.
I felt that these articles had fairly good evidence and created good points to the legalizing of physician-assisted suicide. One of the points that were really good was that the physician is not required to help the patient with suicide, but would simply have the option to do it. Another reason that physician-assisted suicide should be legal is, because physicians are there to help us, and they should do so with whatever we please because of our autonomy. The refutation seemed credible because many of the authors were doctors and had gathered evidence from credible sources.
Physician-assisted suicide would help relieve patients and their families if the patient was in agonizing pain or very weak. If I had a loved one suffering day and night from pains that medicine and palliative techniques could not subdue, I believe he or she would make the decision to end his or her life on their terms, and I would have to deal with their decision appropriately because that is their dying wish. Nobody would want to see any of their loved ones suffer.
Works Cited ProCon. org. “Top 10 Pros and Cons. ” Euthanasia. ProCon. org. ProCon. org, 18 May 2012. Web. 1 Dec. 2012.
ProCon. org. “Is there a legal right to die? ” Euthanasia. ProCon. org. ProCon. org, 9 June 2008. Web. 1 Dec. 2012. ProCon. org. “Do euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide ensure a good death? ” Euthanasia. ProCon. org. ProCon. org, 29 July 2009. Web. 1 Dec. 2012. ProCon. org. “Do euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide violate the Hippocratic Oath? ” Euthanasia. ProCon. org. ProCon. org, 13 Sep. 2012. Web. 2 Dec. 2012. Rogatz, Peter. “The Virtues of Physician Assisted Suicide. ” THE POSITIVE VIRTUES OF PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE. The Humanist, Nov. -Dec. 2009. Web. 02 Dec. 2012.