You've sat in your hospital bed for at least three months now, and the pain and boredom is starting to become even more torturous than you could have imagined. The pain that you are experiencing on a day-to-day basis is excruciating; a normal, everyday procedure like using the restroom or getting something to eat is a long, drawn out, and painful ordeal. All of the doctors that you've talked to agree that you are going to die soon from the disease that has infested your body, but even six months sounds like an excruciatingly long amount of time, especially when all you have to occupy your time is lie in a bed painfully, waiting it out. Your family and friends are already distraught by the news; they already know that you are on the brink of death and could easily pass away soon. You don't know much, but you do know that you just want the pain to end. Many people are burdened with this horrible situation every day. Fortunately, there is an option that they can turn to: euthanasia, also known as physician-assisted suicide. Euthanasia is the humane killing of one's self when terminally ill. It has been supported and shown to be moral by many political figures and follows several Democratic ideals. Euthanasia is a humane and moral way to end one's life during a time of unrecoverable suffering.
The ways that euthanasia promotes the common good and help grant people their individual rights are numerous. For example, one Democratic ideal is promoting the common good. When one has a terminal illness, it not only affects many more people than just the victim; it affects everyone who is close to and cares about that person. When one has six more months of suffering to look forward to, there is nothing that they can do to lighten the situ...
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...y writing it again. This shows that the Hippocratic Oath is not a good reason to not allow euthanasia in the United States.
Now, when one is lying in a hospital bed, suffering through a horrible pain, they will know that they have a comfort. They can help themselves end the suffering quickly and humanely. They can help stop the pain that the family members feel for them. They will be glad that euthanasia was allowed by the United States of America and that many lives will be better off because of the choice that they can make.
Works Cited
1. Girsh, Faye. "How Shall We Die." Free Inquiry Winter 2001: Print.
2. Early Greek Doctors. Hippocratic Oath. ~500 BCE
3. Kass, Leon. "Neither For Love Nor Money." Public Interest 1989: Print.
4. Nuland, Sherwin. "Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia in Practice." New England Journal of Medicine Feb. 24, 2000: Print.
Manu, Constantin D. "Assisted Suicide." Journal of Medicine and Life, vol. 3, no. 1, 2010., pp. 52-9.NC Live. http://nclive.org/cgi-bin/nclsm?url=http://search.proquest.com/docview/ 755214846? accountid=13939. Accessed 24 Sept. 2016.
Anyone can be diagnosed with a terminal illness. It doesn’t matter how healthy you are, who you are, or what you do. Some terminal illnesses you can prevent by avoiding unhealthy habits, eating healthily, exercising regularly and keeping up with vaccinations. However some terminally ill people cannot be helped, their diseases cannot be cured and the only thing possible to help them, besides providing pain relieving medication, is to make them as comfortable as possible while enduring their condition. Many times the pharmaceuticals do not provide the desired pain escape, and cause patients to seek immediate relief in methods such as euthanasia. Euthanasia is the practice of deliberately ending a life in order to alleviate pain and suffering, but is deemed controversial because many various religions believe that their creators are the only ones that should decide when their life’s journey should reach its end. Euthanasia is performed by medical doctors or physicians and is the administration of a fatal dose of a suitable drug to the patient on his or her express request. Although the majority of American states oppose euthanasia, the practice would result in more good as opposed to harm. The patient who is receiving the euthanizing medication would be able to proactively choose their pursuit of happiness, alleviate themselves from all of the built up pain and suffering, relieve the burden they may feel they are upon their family, and die with dignity, which is the most ethical option for vegetative state and terminally ill patients. Euthanasia should remain an alternative to living a slow and painful life for those who are terminally ill, in a vegetative state or would like to end their life with dignity. In addition, t...
Dworkin, Gerald. " The Nature of Medicine." Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: For and Against. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Markoff, Steven. “State by-State Guide to Physician Assisted Suicide” ProCon.org. 13 December 2013, 30 March 2014.
...ractices. Their article gives an in depth, statistical look from a physician’s point of view about physician assisted suicide. They also give many emotional examples as to why this subject is so controversial.
"Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground." Lois Snyder, JD; and Authur L. Caplan, PhD. Annals of Internal Medicine. March 21, 2000. v.132, n.6
In this essay, I will discuss whether euthanasia is morally permissible or not. Euthanasia is the intention of ending life due to inevitable pain and suffering. The word euthanasia comes from the Greek words “eu,” which means good, and “thanatosis, which means death. There are two types of euthanasia, active and passive. Active euthanasia is when medical professionals deliberately do something that causes the patient to die, such as giving lethal injections. Passive euthanasia is when a patient dies because the medical professionals do not do anything to keep them alive or they stop doing something that was keeping them alive. Some pros of euthanasia is the freedom to decide your destiny, ending the pain, and to die with dignity. Some cons
Cotton, Paul. "Medicine's Position Is Both Pivotal And Precarious In Assisted Suicide Debate." The Journal of the American Association 1 Feb. 1995: 363-64.
[2] R. M. Walker, "Physician- assisted suicide: the legal slippery slope," Cancer Control : Journal of the Moffitt Cancer Center, vol. 8, pp. 25, 2001.
Allowing euthanasia would weaken society’s respect for the sanctity of life. The human life should be valued no matter the person’s race, age, gender, religion or social status. A person does not have to make so...
The ethical debate regarding euthanasia dates back to ancient Greece and Rome. It was the Hippocratic School (c. 400B.C.) that eliminated the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide from medical practice. Euthanasia in itself raises many ethical dilemmas – such as, is it ethical for a doctor to assist a terminally ill patient in ending his life? Under what circumstances, if any, is euthanasia considered ethically appropriate for a doctor? More so, euthanasia raises the argument of the different ideas that people have about the value of the human experience.
... Association. 1998. “Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide.” Canadian Medical Association Board of Directors. Retrieved from http://www.cma.ca/index.php/ci_id/3214/la_id/1.htm on October 16th, 2010.
More than likely, a good majority of people have heard about euthanasia at least once in their lifetime. For those out there who have been living under a rock their entire lives, euthanasia “is generally understood to mean the bringing about of a good death – ‘mercy killing’, where one person, ‘A’, ends the life of another person, ‘B’, for the sake of ‘B’.” (Kuhse 294). There are people who believe this is a completely logical scenario that should be allowed, and there are others that oppose this view. For the purpose of this essay, I will be defending those who are suffering from euthanasia.
Focus on the Family Issue Analysts. “Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide.” Focus on the Family. 2008. The 'Standard' of the 'Standard'.
Euthanasia is a medical procedure which speeds up the process of dying for people with incurable, painful, or distressing diseases. The patient’s doctor can stop treatment and instead let them die from their illness. It come from the Greek words for 'good' and 'death', and is also called mercy killing. Euthanasia is illegal in most countries including the UK . If you suffer from an incurable disease, you cannot legally terminate your life. However, in a number of European countries it is possible to go to a clinic which will assist you to die gracefully under some very strict circumstances.