Physician-Assisted Death: Article Analysis

Terminally ill patients lose control over so many aspects of their lives, in many ways physician-assisted death gives them back some of the control they lost. Illness is not discriminatory. Therefore, people of all ages and backgrounds are diagnosed with things like cancer, kidney failure, and heart disease every day. Also, for anyone who is unfortunate enough to be diagnosed with any terminal illness, it can feel like their disease controls every aspect of their lives and they have no choice in the matter. Authors for the Journal of the American Society on Aging Lee Combs and Grube describe how persistent pain took control of a young woman named Brittany Maynard’s life, “Even after undergoing a sophisticated surgery and numerous cancer treatments,

In the article “Physician-Assisted Death in the United States: Are the Existing “Last Resorts” Enough?” Timothy Quill, advocated for PAD writes, “Patients who are worried about future suffering and wonder what options would be available to them”(20). One example is, people who undergo surgery for various reasons. Everyone knows that there are risks associated with any surgery and there are those who want to know what options are available to them should they become incapacitated in any way. In the article “The Final Decision; Quadriplegic MP Stevenson Fletcher Champions Physician-Assisted Death”, author Andrew Duffy describes how a young man named Steven Fletcher felt after a car accident left him unable to paralyzed from the neck down. Duffy writes, “Each successive day in the hospital expanded the dimensions of Mr. Fletchers pain, trauma and grief”(2). The thought of Mr. Fletcher enduring any additional suffering from the metal rod that has to be placed in his back after his car accident was such a concern, that he decided on making PAD an option upon any further injury. He was not sure what the future held, but he knew he did not want to suffer, and took steps to ensure that he