Physician Assisted Suicide Persuasive Essay

It provides a competent patient with a prescription medication to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life. Physician-assisted suicide has its proponents and its opponents. This procedure is not to be taken lightly. All patients pursuing PAS should be evaluated. It is required that “...a patient's request for assistance with a hastened death should generate a thorough evaluation of the patient's motives and attempts at ameliorating the patient's suffering”(NCBI).

Physician-Assisted Suicide: A Right to Murder? Doctors spend over eight years attending college, studying and practicing how humans work and how to save them. So why should it be right for physicians to help out their patients in killing themselves? If a person chooses to end their life, they completely loose the possibility of a medical miracle of being able to live through whatever condition they have.

Physician-assisted death is the practice in which a physician provides a mentally competent patient with the means to take his/her own life, usually in the form of prescribing death-dealing medications. It first became legal in the United States in Oregon in 1998. It is now legal in four other states: Washington, California, Montana, and Vermont. In order for one to exercise their right to die this way, the law states that the patient must be at least 18 years old, be mentally competent, be diagnosed with a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months, and must wait at least fifteen days before filling the death-dealing prescriptions. This controversial practice has raised the question of whether or not it is ethical for a physician

Terminally-ill patients and their families are forced to make some of the toughest decisions anyone will ever have to consider. When it comes to end-of-life decisions, there are two main options that will help prevent unnecessary suffering. The use of a widely-accepted practice, a “do not resuscitate" order, which is a legal order to withhold life-saving interventions in the event of cardiopulmonary arrest. And an alternative option, which has been highly controversial and heavily debated over the past twenty years, is the “physician-assisted suicide” or “aid-in-dying” as it is referred to by supporters. As of 2015, California is the fifth US state to allow physician-assisted suicide after Vermont, Washington, Oregon, and Montana.

Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) is a controversial ethical problem in medicine. PAS is defined as “the practice of providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life” (Meier, et al., 1194). The first significant push for the legalization of PAS arose as a part of the eugenics movement, then further publicized in the 1990’s with Dr. Kevorkian’s case, where he assisted over 40 people in committing suicide in Michigan (Angell, 54). Recently, the ruling of the Brittany Maynard case has brought the nation to discuss the ethical issues of PAS. Her case resulted in bills in several states on the topic.

A Gallup Poll last May found that nearly 70 percent of Americans agree that, “Out of decency and respect for the wishes of people suffering excruciating declines, doctors should be legally allowed to assist terminally ill patients end their lives with strict safeguards against abuse” (Gazette). There are already people believing that it is the right thing to do, however the issue is just trying to get it legalized throughout the whole United Sates. Montana, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and now recently California has already passed “right-to-die” laws. Oregon was the first state to pass this law and it was done so in 1994. Reno Gazette also observed, “In Oregon the number of suicides has been small—a total of 859 suicides in 17 years, last year there was 105 assisted-physician suicides out of a total of 34,160 deaths in the state” (Gazette).

Although Assisted suicide is illegal in most states, it is well known to help many patients, however opposing sides sees the impact it has on family and medical physicians who think it is unethical. Physician assisted suicide is for those who have life threatning illnesses and who do not have much time to live. However, from a legal standpoint, Physician assisted suicide does not include active

What some people think though is that if we set regulations on the doctors, then the Assisted Suicides will be kept to only those who wish for it, but what if the doctors think a patient is better off dead than alive? What if the physician thinks that the patient is not worth saving or keeping alive? One person says “Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the 'slippery slope': once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die”

Patients have the right to the kind of treatment they want. 3) Conclusion a) Physician assisted suicide can help treat the terminally ill how they would like to be treated. b) The long history of assisted suicide speaks for itself in the matter of if it should be legal or

Many people think that there are too many problems with physician assisted suicide. Physician assisted suicide is a procedure that allows physicians to prescribe their patients a lethal medication that they can inject themselves with in order to die on their own terms. There are specific requirements that the patients must meet in order to receive this medication. Physician assisted suicide is only for patients that have life threatening illnesses and do not have much time left to live. It is legal in numerous places around the world including certain places in the United States.

The medical field is filled with opportunities and procedures that are used to help improve a patient’s standard of living and allow them to be as comfortable as possible. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is a method, if permitted by the government, that can be employed by physicians across the world as a way to ease a patient’s pain and suffering when all else fails. PAS is, “The voluntary termination of one's own life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician.”-Medicinenet.com. This procedure would be the patient’s decision and would allow the patient to end their lives in a more peaceful and comfortable way, rather than suffering until the illness takes over completely. Physician assisted suicide should be permitted by the government because it allows patients to end their suffering and to pass with dignity, save their families and the hospital money, and it allows doctors to preserve vital organs to save

In the United States, only six of fifty states have made any legal action in regard to the issue and practice of euthanasia, although there seems to be growing support for the practice commonly referred to as “mercy killing.” Euthanasia allows terminally ill patients who no longer respond to medical treatments to make the decision to end their lives with dignity. Some may even say that this right to death is an important part of the values of democracy. The other side of the debate opposes such ideas, arguing that euthanasia is simply an example of humans trying to play God and that it actually goes against the Due Process Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment. Every day the number of sick patients who are forced to live the last part of their

There are many people who feel that helping someone die is not ethical. These people argue making a laws for it and carry an actual action When many parents teach their kids to help others as much as they can, most of the parents may not include assisted suicide because that’s consider ‘murder,’ not ‘helping.’ From the standpoint of people who hasn’t been in a situation where their loved one suffer so much that it will seem to be better to let the patient rest in peace rather than making him suffer.

Doctors enter medicine out of desire to save lives, not end them. Euthanasia goes against the natural course of life. Physician assisted suicide is when the physician gives the lethal means to the patient for him or her to take whenever they desire to end their lives and commit suicide. Euthanasia is when the doctors take the active role in killing the patient, which often involves injecting the patient with lethal ____________________________________ ___________________________________ substances. Although these two concepts are slightly different on the procedural side, they both have the same morals, that involve killing a human being who could have lived a rather happy life with the proper treatment.

Euthanasia and assisted suicide is an issue all over the world, and each country has to answer the difficult question time and time again: Should it be Legalized? Though Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are different practices, they both achieve the same purpose. Euthanasia is defined as “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma” using a lethal injection, while assisted suicide is a prescribed medicine. Euthanasia was first urged in the United States around 1930.