Argumentative Essay On Physician Assisted Suicide

Introduction When there are no more options and death and disease are inevitably going to take over, how far should one go to be sure they die on their own terms? Physician-assisted suicide is a topic that has been debated over since the early 1980’s. Suicide itself is a very controversial topic; the controversy gets worse when involving a physician, who’s duty is to preserve life. Suicide is the general definition of the intention of taking/terminating one’s own life. Physician-assisted suicide has a lot of similarities to euthanasia, meaning “good death.” In physician-assisted suicide, the patient ultimately kills himself or herself with the assistance of the physician. Is it right for a physician to assist in a patient suicide? There are

Flash forward to America in 1885 when the American Medical Association (AMA) formally opposes euthanasia, physician assisted suicide is not in practice in the United States. The following 100 years represent little to no changes on the views of physician assisted suicide until 1984 when the AMA publishes two reports ("Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment, and "Withholding or Withdrawing Life-Prolonging Medical Treatment -- Patients' Preferences") indicating their previous stance on physician assisted suicide has changed—but only in very specific conditions. Along with this transformation, surveys conducted in the early 1990’s identified that over half of respondents were in favor of physician assisted suicide. This “right to die” movement had taken America by storm, and, on June 4th, 1990, Dr. Kevorkian participated in his first physician assisted

Of upmost importance was the Supreme court ruling on June 26th, 1997 in Washington v. Glucksberg and Vacco v. Quill that there [i]s no constitutional right to die. Following this ruling, and despite losing his medical license, Dr. Kevorkian was shown administering drugs to Thomas Youk (suffering from Lou Gehrig’s) on 60 Minutes (Brian, 1998). Unfortunately, the death of Youk was the end of Kevorkian’s great reign as a pioneer of physician assisted suicide. Because Youk suffered from Lou Gehrig’s, he had lost the ability to ambulate—thus, Kevorkian administered the drugs to Youk himself and Kevorkian was convicted of second degree murder by a Michigan Jury in 1999 (Charatan). Even though Youk fulfilled all requirements for considering of physician assisted suicide, the fact that he could not administer the drugs himself led to a lengthy imprisonment for Dr. Kevorkian and an excellent display of the turmoil surrounding physician assisted suicide in the United