First, and most important of these, the patient or persons requesting the physician assisted suicide must have a condition that is incurable and associated with severe, unrelenting suffering and understand the prognosis. Second, the physician must be sure the request is not made because of inadequate pain control. Third, the patient must clearly and repeatedly request to die. Fourth the physician must be sure the patient’s judgment is not distorted. Fifth, the physician assisted suicide should only be carried out in a meaningful doctor patient relationship.
Perspectives on Physician-Assisted Suicides Brendolynn Champlaie PHI103 Informal Logic John Moore September 22, 2010 Thesis Assisted suicide should be legal it will allow terminally ill patients the freedom of choosing how they should end their life when they can no longer endure the pain and suffering. People have the freedom to do almost anything that they choose to do except for how they die. Some patients would like to die with dignity since is a personal choice and this is something their doctor should understand. The method that they might want to choose is euthanasia which is also known as assisted suicide, physician-assisted suicide (dying), doctor-assisted dying (suicide), and more loosely termed mercy (Christian Nordquist
To allow people to assist others in destroying their lives violates a duty we have to respect human life”. A society committed to preserving and protecting life should not allow people to destroy it (Andre, Claire & Velasquez, M ) Though it’s nobody’s fault when someone gets sick with a terminal illness, should we allow people to be put to death out of compassion or mercy? Many people feel that life and death are in the hands of God. That God should be the ultimate judge in who dies and when. What about people with disabilities?
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.
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.
They believe that people should die naturally and should not be assisted in their death by medical means. People believe that PAS is unethical and should not even be considered. “Many people fear that physician-assisted suicide will create a climate in which some people are pressured into committing suicide. The very old, the very poor, or minorities and other vulnerable populations might be encouraged to hasten death, rather than to "burden" their families or the health care system. Again, this is not a genuine choice, but a social issue, one that stems from how our society cares for its elders and for the poor, and whether minority groups can get good health care” (Lynn, 2006).
Physician Assisted suicide The phrase “do no harm” is not actually mentioned in the Hippocratic Oath but that dose not mean that the words in the oath are not upheld, the oath goes much deeper to cement the extreme responsibilities of a doctor and to ensure that it is a patient is first a person not a disease. As a doctor should always exorcise every available option to treat a healthy patient there is an ongoing debate on weather the same treatment is carried out on a patient thought to be terminally ill. The debate has stirred up a great deal of emotions and is near and dear to many American hearts. With the issue of Physician Assisted Suicide many points are discussed for and against In the Articles: “Death And The Law: Why Government Has An Interest In Preserving Life” By Lawrence Rudden and Gerard V. Bradley and “Promoting A culture Of Abandonment” By Teresa R Wagner. Physician assisted suicide is something I disagree with because It would violate the trust between a patient and a doctor, It opens the floodgates for other such abuses and generally such requests are made out of fear for the dying process.
If we are sincerely committed to equality then the answer must be no. Demanding that she have the surgery would entail us to say that you have to give up your body to your unborn child. It is unacceptable to force a pregnant woman to undergo treatment. It is her fundamental right of freedom of choice and control over her own body and life. In fact if we force this woman to have the surgery it could compromise the sanctity of a woman’s body.
A follower of Natural Law would object to euthanasia, chiefly for this reason. A follower of Natural Law would argue that the sanctity of life is important, building up on what St. Thomas Aquinas asserted- that all life is sacred. Euthanasia denies a person’s natural course of life and this takes away sacredness of life. Euthanasia, although it could be used to end a person’s suffering is not taking into account that God set people’s lives out to be a certain way and only he can take and give life. A doctor does not have the right to do this because he or she is not God and should not ‘play God’.
Although many people feel that doctors must do everything possible to keep their patient alive. In this paper I am going to explain the different legal aspects of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. There are two sides to this controversy, and their basic ideas are of the following: terminally ill patients should