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The Pros And Cons Of Physician Assisted Suicide

1464 Words6 Pages

Envision a terminally-ill patient or senior in their last days cradled with warm blankets but wrapped in tubes and wiring. As they lay, the idea of being ready to die comes into their head. They have and have not carried out some goals in life and will leave behind special people. All the while their pain comes and goes. Should this person ask their doctor for help to die or should they stay alive and suffer? Assisted Suicide, also called physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is not a light topic. There are slight differences in the methods yet, people hear the words and think of immoral acts such as mental health suicide or murder. Assisted Suicide occurs when a physician makes a medicine available that will cause the patient to die (CNN, 2). It is crucial to have a stance on these baffling subjects hence the possibility that we may someday face the same question. Numerous emotional and mental factors, such as mental health and autonomy play a difference in why assisted suicide is a moral choice. …show more content…

A physician has various ethical and moral values that they follow. For example, the Hippocratic Oath comes into play when you think of the ethical values. The oath explains the ethical approaches of physicians and what they should not do. Doctors and many people believe that a physician is challenging this oath when he assists someone to die. One of the most famous doctors that performed physician-assisted suicides was “Dr. Death,” also known as Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian was an American physician that aided many ill patients in dying. While filming a “60 minutes segment”, Kevorkian injected a lethal drug into a man with the terminal illness ALS, he later was convicted of this (NY Times, 4). Many medical ethicists disapproved of Kevorkian’s act saying that he violated one of the main approaches of the oath, Do No Harm (Britannica, 4). Kevorkian passed away in

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Physician-assisted suicide has become an increasingly controversial topic over the last two decades. According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Physician-assisted suicide is, “suicide by a patient facilitated by means (as a drug prescription) or by information (as an indication of a lethal dosage) provided by a physician aware of the patient's intent.” The process one must endure to partake in assisted suicide is rather extensive; not everyone who qualifies for it receives the medication. The idea began in 1990, when Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted 54 year-old Janet Adkins of Portland, Oregon, who suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease, in committing suicide with his hand-made “suicide machine.” This machine had three stages: a saline solution, a sedative (thiopental), and finally a lethal dose of potassium chloride that would stop the heart altogether.

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