Assisted Suicide Argumentative Essay

840 Words4 Pages

Out of 35,598 people that died in Oregon, 132 people chose the horrific route of euthanasia in the year 2015. This form of death dates back to the ancient Greeks, which was known to them as eu thanatos. Instead of lethal injections, hemlock, a poison deriving from a toxic plant, was utilized to kill many Greeks, such as the famous philosopher, Socrates. However, Christian views on assisted suicide were much different. Saint Thomas Aquinas believed that any method of euthanasia contradicts the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” He also acknowledged it specifically harmful because it did not equip a person an abundant amount of time to obtain forgiveness for one’s sins. Differentiating from these two groups, World War II Nazis created a classified …show more content…

On the contrary, in Oregon, assisted suicide is legal if physicians write deadly prescriptions in appeal of the patient. According to Encyclopedia.com, the guidelines in order for the prescription to be legal include: “requiring a second opinion to verify the diagnosis; referral of the patient to be a mental health professional if the doctors suspect the patient has a psychiatric or psychological condition that causes ‘impaired judgment’; a fifteen day waiting period between request and prescription; and, reporting the assisted suicide to the Oregon Department of Health.” Meanwhile, in most of the United States, euthanasia is considered illegal and a felony somewhat similar to manslaughter. Doctors waste precious time distributing death notes, when the clear solution suggests to spend more time writing prescriptions to nurse as many patients as they can. According to the Atlantic, Dr. Jack Kevorkian (1928-2011) invented a gruesome contraption that allowed more than 100 patients end their lives. Kevorkian, also known as “Dr, Death”, owned a van where his machines took place. First, he would outfit the victim with a saline drip. The patient would then press a button switching the solution to thiopental, and instantly, his patient would then slip into a coma forever. He called it the Thanatron. Because Kevorkian’s machine was mainly a van, he collected the carbon monoxide from the exhaust pipe and released it …show more content…

Reported by the Dutch Department of Public Health and Social Medicine in 1991, about 2,300 out of 128,786 deaths resulted from euthanasia (Gay, 98). Physicians are continuing to end the lives of hopeless patients around the globe, and it seems as though doctors undergo this procedure for the wealth. They do not realized the negative impact that they are multiplying universally. An approximation of 3,000 to 5,000 deaths occur annually as a result of assisted suicide in accordance to the Dutch Society of Voluntary Euthanasia (Gay, 98). No life is worth taking although one can peacefully take it by