Many disagree with it but I personally believe it should be up to the patient and his/her doctor to decide what is best for their life. I would say it would be considered as ethical egoism. I don’t agree with physician-assisted-suicide being illegal. I understand that someone’s death affects many people but I do believe that at the end it should be the patient’s choice. If I were terminally ill, I would not want to suffer just to suffer.
When you had a choice between a slow, prolonging and a quick, instantaneous death, which option would you choose? When only presented with these two options, one would probably pick the latter choice - after all humans are not biologically designed to withstand prolonged pain and suffering. Hence it is why assisted death has been one of the most important yet controversial topics hotly debated over the centuries. The term should not be confused with Euthanasia (also known as “mercy killing”), which is a practice of ending a life painlessly, assisted by a third party. For example, if a physician (a third person) assists the death of a patient by giving a fatal dose of medication or injection etc, then euthanasia has taken place.
Physician assisted suicide should not be legalized for the simple fact many would give up and take the easy way out. There is currently a pervasive assumption that if assisted suicide and/or voluntary euthanasia (AS/VE) were to legalized, then doctors would take responsibility for making the decision that these interventions were indicated, for prescribing the medication, and (in euthanasia) for administering it .Richard Huxable remarks “that homicide law encompasses various crimes, so prosecutors can choose charges to suit the circumstances. Yet one thing is clear: mercy killing is still killing, equally, murder is murder” Physician assisted suicide is nothing more than cold blooded
Their condition might take an unexpected turn; or they might change their mind about a treatment; or a treatment might have disappointing effects. In these and similar cases, withdrawal of a treatment after trying it will be acceptable legally and ethically. If the team believes that a treatment could do some good, it would be unacceptable not to commence it on the basis of a false fear that it would not be possible to stop the treatment. Special legal procedures are associated with decisions relating to patients in a persistent vegetative state (BMA 2007). Intention Charges of murder and voluntary manslaughter require an intention to kill or harm on the part of the accused.
Assess this argument: ‘Killing is wrong if and only if it deprives a person of a valuable future life; some terminally ill people do not have a valuable future life; so it is not wrong to kill them’. Voluntary euthanasia is the ending of human life and intentionally relieving pain that a patient is suffering due to a terminal illness such as cancer. By definition, diseases such as cancer, cannot be cured or sufficiently treated and are expected to result in the death of the patient within the near future. As they no longer see the remaining months left of their life valuable, ending their life now seems a rational request. Killing is a form of active euthanasia whereby a person is deliberately causing death of a patient.
Assisted suicide caught my eye because when I saw the topic my main thought was a relative or a friend would help bring your life to death. Basically that a friend would help you kill yourself. However never did it occur to me that the help from a “friend” would be a physician prescribing you with lethal medication to speed up the process of one’s death. I was concerned with this area of bioethics because it brought my attention that it is essentially messing around with the idea of dying naturally. Instead of God bringing you to your death, one is giving ones life away, but asking for it in medical terms.
From the con side of the topic Physicians legally and morally should not assist in suicide of terminally ill patients. This simple fact could boil down to the simple fact that suicide is suicide and it is morally wrong. A lot of countries around the world feel as though this is not moral and this why it is illegal in a vast majority of countries around the world. You could argue that this goes against a doctor’s job. The medical person who is administering the drug is not doing their job as a doctor, which is to help people not kill
Therefore, I agree with euthanasia protestors. Instead of ending someone’s life in order to prevent any more suffering, we should alleviate pain by improving our hospice care and making our healthcare system more affordable. Let us not lose our humanity by valuing life from the best ethical rules possible. In conclusion, the severity and the complexity of the euthanasia debate indicate why euthanasia is the most active area of research in contemporary bioethics. While some people strongly believe that euthanasia should be legalized, other people insist that euthanasia is literally a type of murder.
Leslie Gomez Ms. T. Rodriguez Composition 1302 February 22, 2016 Assisted suicide should be permitted. Assisted suicide has been one of the main things that concern many people in the United States. Many people believe that patients have the right to die with the assistance of a physician, but many others are against it because their religions don’t allow it. Others are on favorite for it because they understand how much they are suffering. Implementing assisted suicide would give terminally ill patients the chance to die with dignity, knowing that they have the control over the way they die.
It would be very difficult to communicate to future physicians to killing in a context of legalized euthanasia. Are we (U.S.) ready for this? For some dying people, severe suffering can be alleviated. However, when such suffering cannot be lessened, assisted suicide may be seen as a compassionate act because it ends a life that has lost its meaning (Arthur Rifkin). All life has meaning, even if it’s the end of that