The Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

One in six Americans live in a state where a doctor can legally prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a patient (Carter). For years, there has been much argument about whether physician-assisted suicide, in which a doctor prescribes a lethal dose of medication to a patient upon their request to end their life, is immoral or morally permissible (Crocker). Many opponents of physician assisted suicide fear the idea that physicians are encouraging those with fatal illness to end their lives, as opposed to encouraging them to fight to improve the quality of their life. Yet, others prefer that there should be emphasis on autonomy and an easier way out for those in financial ruins. According to the statistics from

The American Medical Association, however, opposes physician assisted suicide and says that it is “fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as a healer” (Anderson). The Hippocratic Oath that doctors around the world take makes physician assisted suicide unethical. The Hippocratic Oath states, “I will keep [the sick] from harm and injustice, I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it nor will I make a suggestion to this effect ” (Prieto). Regardless, as of February 2018, six states in the United States legalized physician assisted suicide. These six states include Colorado, Oregon, California, Montana, Vermont, and Washington (“Physician Assisted Suicide Fast Facts”). Even though there are many physicians willing to help others die, physician assisted suicide is not the right way to bid goodbye. There are many reasons as to why physician assisted suicide should be considered unethical. Some of these reasons consist of the corruption of the profession of medicine, harm to the society/ a threat to humanism, and the fact that there are better medical alternatives, which makes

The main purpose of medicine is to heal, not to kill. For instance, a physician’s job is to heal and doctors aren’t healing when they’re assisting patients in killing themselves. Physicians need to be seeking to help eliminate disease, pain, and suffering. Not patients. Allowing physicians to assist in helping patients die corrupts the defining goal of medicine. As Dr. Leon Kass stated in his testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives:

The legalization of physician-assisted suicide will pervert the medical profession by transforming the healer of human beings into a technical dispenser of death. For over two millennia the medical ethic, mindful that power to cure, has held an inviolable rule, “Doctors must not kill” (Anderson).

Dr. Paul McHugh agrees and believes that the inviolable rule is essential to the practice of medicine and as a result, he states:

Since ancient Greek physicians have been tempted to help desperate patients kill themselves, and many of those Greek doctors must have done so. But even then the best rejected such actions as unworthy and, as the Hippocratic Oath insists, contrary to the physician’s purpose of “benefiting the sick”