The Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

“If, when I was diagnosed with ALS, I had been given an easy way out with a doctor's prescription and support, I would have taken that opportunity,” he [John Norton] said. “I would have missed the bulk of my life”(Karaim) Like many other terminally ill patients John Norton may have ended his life if he had the option of physician-assisted suicide. However, he ended up living fifty-two years longer than doctors predicted. Physician-assisted suicide is a process in which a physician helps aid in the death of a patient prescribing a lethal dose of drugs. If consent is given by the patient, the process is considered voluntary. On the other hand, if a family member, or anyone besides the patient, gives consent, the process becomes involuntary.

There are many concerns regarding consent. Assisted suicide could very well become involuntary suicide without the proper regulations. “Whether acting from compassion or under some other influence, a physician who would provide a drug for a patient to administer might well go the further step of administering the drug himself; so, the barrier between assisted suicide and euthanasia could become porous, and the line between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia as well“ ("Would Legalizing Voluntary Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide Create a Slippery Slope to Involuntary Euthanasia?"). These concerns have been proven to be true in the Netherlands, “where voluntary euthanasia was legalized in 2002, latest figures show that more than 500 people were killed in 2005 by doctors without having given their consent” (Beckford). “Half of the killings in the Netherlands are now non-voluntary and a ‘culture of death,’ admitted as such privately by many Dutch doctors, has now taken root there. It has become a common legal ‘solution’ for those with mental illness, permanent disability, and even old age” (Merino 48). These statistics go to support the concern of a slippery slope between voluntary and involuntary euthanasia. Because consent is not needed, lethal drugs can easily be misused. Involuntary euthanasia

However, it is unethical for a physician to administer a lethal drug. In the Hippocratic oath, that every physician takes, they promise to do no harm. The oath states, “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.” By prescribing a lethal dose of drugs to a patient, physicians are breaking the Hippocratic oath. “Unfortunately, we live in an age when pledges of duty and fidelity of the kind found in the Oath are fast becoming passé... This is most unfortunate. The author of the Oath... understood that killing is not a medical act” ("Do Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide Violate the Hippocratic Oath?"). The Hippocratic oath provides a foundation for the practices of physicians, and because of this, the notion of physician-assisted suicide is completely counterintuitive to the work of a physician. By becoming a physician, people are promising to do everything in their power in order to help not hurt patients. Therefore, physician-assisted suicide goes against the fundamental belief of