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.
In particular, critics state that diagnosing death and putting people on end of life care pathways is a form of euthanasia – one newspaper story featured the headline ‘Sentenced to death on the NHS’ (Devlin 2009). This type of criticism is founded on the myths outlined above, particularly those relating to passive and active euthanasia and to withdrawal of treatment. It is worth restating that care pathways allow healthcare professionals to try out treatments and withdraw them if they are not effective, and to reintroduce treatments if patients respond in unexpected ways. A clearer understanding of the ethics and law in this area should help nurses to address these criticisms and reassure themselves that the guidance set out in care pathways is legally and ethically sound. NURSING
Professor Suzanne McDermott of USC School of Medicine, Columbia, SC, stated, there will be many states in the next decade that introduce or consider the introduction of laws to legalize assisted suicide. The issues are complex and the evidence is not robust…We know there is another side to the debate, and this volume does not present the proponents' arguments, which have been presented in other journals. (McDermott, Suzanne, Professor) The definition of murder is, the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought, which means there intention to do
Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS) in Canada 2011-NOV: Case before the B.C. Supreme Court Reactivating Sue Rodriguez' fight: Some individuals -- often those suffering from a terminal illness later in life -- find their physical and/or emotional pain intolerable and uncontrollable. They would like to commit suicide, but lack the knowledge or physical ability to do so. They would like a physician to give them assistance in dying with dignity. However, giving such help is currently a criminal act according to section 241(b) of the Criminal Code of Canada as it is in almost all U.S. states.
Sue Rodriguez wanted her life to be terminated while she was still lucid and had a say in what happened to her, before the illness could take full course. Her request was denied due to a violation under The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Section 241 (b) of the Charter provides as follows, Everyone who… (b) aids or abets a person to commit suicide, where suicide ensues or not, is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years. Under these terms, the British Columbia court dismissed her case. Rodriguez then appealed the B.C.
Then there are the people who feel that if people who are suffering have the right to stop life sustaining-treatment then why other suffering patients can’t ask physicians to give them life –ending treatments. Physician assisted suicide has been a big debate here in the America. In 1997 the Us Supreme Court said that there is no constitutional right to physician assisted suicide and the State Legistratures may choose if they want to vote to legalize physician assisted suicide then the Oregon board of Pharmacy put in an order requiring physicians to document if this is for an assisted suicide. In 1999 Oregon became the only US state that voted to legalize physician assisted suicide and in January 1998 one doctor announced his or her participation in the assisted suicide act. There are several countries that currently allow one or the other types of physician assisted suicide.
Physician-assisted suicide is the voluntary termination of a person’s life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. Physician-assisted suicide is the practice of providing a patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life. For decades it has been an on going debate whether or not this practice is right legally, morally, and religiously. Does a person have the right to end his or her own life? This will be the topic addressed in this paper.
Essay # 4, Research Essay: Capital Punishment Lawrence Kwak One of the issues that continually create a tension in today's society is whether or not the capital punishment is necessary. Capital punishment is the form of the execution that government carries out on convicted criminal. Capital punishment was removed from the Canadian law in late 1970s. Ever since then, a movement to bring back capital punishment was debated in the Canadian House of Commons couple times but defeated on votes. The fact that this motion was prevented is truly beneficial to Canadians due to many problems with this law.
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
Debate Paper HAS 3104 April 15, 2012 According to "MedicineNet" (1996-2012), Assisted Suicide is “the deliberate hastening of death by a terminally ill patient with assistance from a doctor, family member, or another individual” (Definition of Assisted suicide). Many of us when we think about assisted suicide go directly to the one person who was most talked about in 1990’s Dr. Jack Kevorkian, it is said that this specific doctor made death his specialty. He became widely known for his “death machine” a device he invented that allowed a user to self-inject an anesthetic and then a lethal dose of potassium chloride. (He called the machine a thanatron, after Thanatos, the figure of death in Greek mythology.) ("Who 2 Biographies", 2011).