Civil Remedies and Assisted Suicide
This essay goes into the need for civil remedies to guard against assisted suicide actions by family, guardians, etc. Some states have already enacted such legislation, and others are in the process. This is a simple, safe legal procedure for protecting against the threat ot assisted suicide/euthanasia.
On May 2, 1994, a Michigan jury acquitted Jack Kevorkian of charges related to his publicly proclaimed assistance in the suicide of Thomas Hyde. The verdict points up the way in which the pathos of individual cases often leads criminal case juries to react emotionally, failing to give considerate attention to the general effects on older people and people with disabilities of signaling societal acceptance of death as the solution to human problems. This is a weakness in our society at the present time.
This is one of several strong reasons why more states should follow the lead of Minnesota, Tennessee, and North Dakota, all of which have recently enacted "civil remedy" statutes that, entirely apart from criminal remedies, allow private parties to obtain injunctions against those who assist suicides. Injunctions are granted by judges, without juries, and a judge can punish violators with sanctions for contempt of court.
Regrettably, the Kevorkian acquittal is not an isolated case of jury nullification of laws protecting suicide victims. Recent history demonstrates that no physicians, and few non-physicians, have been successfully prosecuted for assisting suicide. The emotional tug of individual cases makes prosecutors reluctant to seek punishment and juries reluctant to impose it. An article in the November 5, 1992 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine co-authored by Dr. Timothy Quill (who himself escaped penalty when a grand jury refused to indict him for his openly announced participation in assisting a suicide[1]) notes, "In every situation in which a physician has compassionately helped a terminally ill person to commit suicide, criminal charges have been dismissed or a verdict of not guilty has been brought."[2] Other studies confirm this conclusion, which in fact is not limited to circumstances of "terminal illness" or "compassion."[3]
While there have been a few successful criminal prosecutions of non-doctors, they have been extremely rare. A 1986 article in the Columbia Law Review concluded:
[A]ll indications are that assistance statutes are rarely, if ever, used. ... [D]espite the thousands of suicides each year, only about fifty news reports regarding some form of prosecution in the past decade for some type of assistance to suicide have been located.
... and the common soldier. Allied forces came to believe increasingly that "the only good Jap is a dead Jap." (78-79)
Physicians face an ethical dilemma when confronting their patients who are suffering. Many have to choose between abiding by the law or ignoring the law and acting on their own beliefs by assisting in a patient’s suicide. Dr. Jack Kevorkian is certainly one doctor who has taken the illegal route in assisting in many of his patients suicides. In “Killer Doc,” William F. Buckley provides a brief overview of the case and informs his audience of the shocking incidents of Kevorkian’s performed euthanasia on Thomas Youk. In “Offering a Helping Hand to those Who Long to Die,” Mark Nichols compares the famous euthanasia doctors, Dr. Kevorkian and Austrailia’s Dr. Philip Nitschke.
Roosevelt, commonly known as FDR, had the leadership skills to guide the US through the Great Depression of the 1930s and most of World War II, led the Allies to victory over the dictators, won an unprecedented four consecutive elections, and did all this with a broken body.
John Dower's War Without Mercy describes the ugly racial dimensions of the conflict in the Asian theater of World War II and their consequences on both military and reconstruction policy in the Pacific. "In the United States and Britain," Dower reminds us, "the Japanese were more hated than the Germans before as well as after Pearl Harbor. On this, there was no dispute among contemporary observers. They were perceived as a race apart, even a species apart -- and an overpoweringly monolithic one at that. There was no Japanese counterpart to the 'good German' in the popular consciousness of the Western Allies." (8) Conservative readers, don't fret - Dower isn't making this argument to exonerate the Japanese for their own racism or war crimes -- after all, "atrocious behavior occurred on all sides in the Pacific War." (12-13) Rather, Dower is exploring the propaganda of the US-Japanese conflict to delineate the "patterns of a race war," the cultural mechanisms of "othering," and the portability of racial/racist stereotypes. For "as the war years themselves changed over into into an era of peace between Japan and the Allied powers, the shrill racial rhetoric of the early 1940s revealed itself to be surprisingly adaptable. Idioms that formerly had denoted the unbridgeable gap between oneself and the enemy proved capable of serving the goals of accommodation as well." (13)
The republic of Brazil was heavily influenced by positivism, which demanded order and progress. The liberal elite focused so heavily on progress that the underlying social problems of Brazil were ignored. The rural majority was marginalized and faced unemployment, drought, and a reforming state. The choice to defy the state and live in the community of Canudos was made because it offered a lifestyle that was out of reach elsewhere in the backlands. While Canudos was inspired by religion, it had several principal attractions that were socially based. Foremost, Canudos offered a sense of safety and order in a deteriorating environment. The high number of ex slaves is an example of this. With the abolishment of slavery, there was an immediate increase in the mobility of that population. With its geographic isolation it provided a safe place for them to go, opportunity, and a place to hide in case slavery was reestablished.
In March of 1998, a woman suffering with cancer became the first person known to die under the law on physician-assisted suicide in the state of Oregon when she took a lethal dose of drugs. This law does not include people who have been on a life support system nor does it include those who have not voluntarily asked physicians to help them commit suicide. Many people worry that legalizing doctor assisted suicide is irrational and violates the life-saving tradition of medicine and it has been argued that the reason why some terminally ill patients yearn to commit suicide is nothing more than depression. Physician Assisted Suicide would lessen the human life or end the suffering and pain of those on the verge of dying; Physician Assisted Suicide needs to be figured out for those in dire need of it or for those fighting against it. The main purpose for this paper is to bring light on the advantages and disadvantages of physician-assisted suicide and to show what principled and moral reasoning there is behind each point.
Hitler was a genius but an evil genius. He had the ability to convince millions of German’s of his ideas to extent the power of Germany over Europe, to unite all Germans in a nation and to destroy millions of Jewish people. Even with his disturbing ideas Hitler still fascinates people. How could a man be filled with so much hatred to think that people must be perfect to be of one race? Hitler believed that “the finest thing men could do was to go to war and conquer foreign places. Peace he decided was a bad thing for mankind. It corrupted men and made them soft.” (Shirer, 1961, p. 18)
One of the most well known contributors to math from Greece would be Archimedes. He
M., Lee and Alexander Stingl. “Assisted Suicide: An Overview.” Points of View: Assisted Suicide. Great Neck Publishing, 1 Jan. 2013. 1. Alabama Virtual Library. Points of View Reference Center. Web. 20 March 2014.
According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, between 1990 and 1999, a well-known advocate for physician assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian helped 130 patients end their lives. He began the debate on assisted suicide by assisting a man with committing suicide on national television. According to Dr. Kevorkian, “The voluntary self-elimination of individual and mortally diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare” (Kevorkian). In other words, Kevor...
This condition can spread from one person to another (contagious). Toxin-producing E. coli can also spread from animals to humans. Most cases of E. coli infection come from cattle.
Life is a precious gift. Humans have the ability to decide how their lives are to be lived. In the United States, people can legally control to a limited extent their death. In a living will, a person can request that extraordinary life sustaining measures be withheld in terminal medical condition. However, the abrupt ending of a life via assisted suicide is controversial. Should people be allowed to take their own lives when facing a painful and prolonged ending? I believe that they should have that option.
Geometry, a cornerstone in modern civilization, also had its beginnings in Ancient Greece. Euclid, a mathematician, formed many geometric proofs and theories [Document 5]. He also came to one of the most significant discoveries of math, Pi. This number showed the ratio between the diameter and circumference of a circle.
Differing from Rome, there was no major disruption of society. Both civilizations were invading by central Asian groups. Towards the end of their decline, emperors and dynasties tried to revive the societies. This temporarily lessened decline but eventually did not last. Overtaxing of peasants in both societies caused for uprisings which weakened the economy. Lesser armies made it simple for the Huns to invade.
It is stated directly in the Hippocratic Oath, a promise made by every physician, “I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel” (Lasagna 1). Euthanasia is the practice in which physicians administer a lethal dose of drugs, commonly pentobarbital or sodium thiopental, to a patient. Patients either request this procedure, due to a terminal illness, or their family may request it if the patient is in a coma or is in a paralyzed state. Euthanasia dates back thousands of years, but recently, its ethics have been heavily debated. Since the year 2000, many patients with severe medical conditions and activist groups have fought for the right to not only refuse treatment, but to end one’s own life in order to bring