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The Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

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Do physicians have a higher moral code than the average person? Will they always do the right thing? Many might say yes, but are physicians not human too? Physician-assisted suicide can promote an end to a patient’s suffering when there is no hope of getting better. While The process of ending life during a terrible suffering can be beneficial, the risks of malpractice can be too great to allow.

The history of physician assisted suicide is a long one filled with many details, history, and much debate. Being that the topic of a physician being able to euthanize a patient has been around since the first practices started. To illustrate this, it says in the Ancient Hippocratic Oath, which states the conduct and obligations of doctors, holds …show more content…

Legalizing the ability for a physician to have the ability to end the life of a patient who has a terminal illness creates too many potential problems. Ending the life of a patient would put the ultimate amount of the trust in doctors to do the right thing, which may not always be the case. We as people trust doctors as we look at them as they know everything and have moral codes that are greater than the average man; this is simply not true. In the Netherlands in 1990 a study was released that “found that of the roughly 3,600 cases of euthanasia and physician assisted dying per year, approximately 1,000 of the instances involved nonvoluntary or involuntary euthanasia” (Standish 2) furthering the point. This happened even with the “regulatory oversight because of the risk for abusing patients”(Van Der Maas 1706)and showed doctors have a way of getting around barriers. If physicians can get around oversight form watchful eyes to still commit 1,000 counts of malpractice than you simply cannot regulate it. The stats do not lie. Not all Physicians cannot be trusted to perform the …show more content…

In a request for Physician assisted suicide the patient not only wishes to die because of the pain, but the scare that they will become a burden to others. Likewise, losing themselves from what they used to be, and are just mentally exhausted from the process of dying. In cases where patients face these challenges “the withdrawal of treatment is appropriate”(Myers 401) because if life feels like a prison, then the government does not have the right to keep them locked up. There are many patients that are in the hospice care program living out the horrible situations as they cannot take care of themselves. For instance, Courtney Campbell notes “nearly 90% of patients who have used Oregon’s ground-breaking “Death with Dignity Act” from 1998-2011 , and over 96% of patients in 2011 were in hospice care”(1). It is understandable why some patients would choose to have this procedure as pain and suffering with no escape can be a great motivator. When a patient has a neurodegenerative disease, they might see it as a better way to go than to live without the full aspect of life. It would be very deteriorating to live in a paralyzed state for the rest of your life as some people do. If you cannot fully live the life you wish for reasons you cannot control then someone else should not have the right to tell you what you can and cannot

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