Physician Assisted Suicide: A Rhetorical Analysis

Michael J. Hyde’s article entitled ‘Medicine, Rhetoric, and Euthanasia: A Case Study In The Workings Of A Postmodern Discoure was centered around an anonymous article sent to the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) by a doctor who claims that he was called to care for a cancer patient whose only words were “let’s get this over with.” Hyde discussed the idea that it is possible that the even being described by the anonymous author never took place. At the same time, whether or not the doctor actually participated in a physician-assisted suicide is not as important as the discussion that it initiated regarding doctors helping to facilitate the deaths of patients (i.e.: euthanasia) and all of the rhetoric surrounding the idea of euthanasia.

Lisa Keränen introduces us to her article through a discussion of the technicality (from both an actual technological and also an official standpoint) as it regards to the decision to end a humans’ life. Dr. Keränen uses a hospital as a ‘micro example’ of a much bigger point she is trying to get across to its reader. The hospital in question uses a patient worksheet form in order to let stakeholders (i.e: family members of patients and/or patients who are of sound mind) to know of the patients and their options allowed when the disease has progressed to a stage where it is certain that he or she cannot recover from. The worksheet offers options which the patient has to reduce their pain and the goal of Dr. Keränen article is to show how much a personal decision such as choosing death has now become an institutionalized

Sobnosky’s, entitled “Experience Testimony, and the Women’s Health Movement” article is a look at how the collective and ubiquitous experiences of women helped shaped a women’s movement that was geared towards helping women overcome their mistreatment by the health care system at large. Indeed, from a ‘macro standpoint’ the advances of medicine in the 1970’s and 1980’s did not seem to help women as much as they should have, because medical professionals based their interventions and interactions with women on antiquated, draconian beliefs in terms of how women should be treated. One of the biggest examples of this is women being treated (and it should be noted that the word “treated” could have a double meaning-one is treated as a patient and the other is treated as a human) poorly, is the recognition that women were usually ONLY treated by an obstetrician who in many cases did not have the knowledge nor the skills to be a general medical doctor for anyone. In other words, the fact that specialist doctors were also primary care doctors is a reflection of the fact that women were treated based on the fact that they were women as opposed to human