What Is Death With Dignity Or Murder

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Death with Dignity or Murder?
In the movie You Don’t Know Jack, the protagonist Dr. Jack Kevorkian was tasked with the moral dilemma of assisting his patients to commit suicide. Dr. Kevorkian continuously provided his terminally ill patients with a choice many other doctors would not provide them with. He was scrutinized by the public and medical community alike for assisting his patients with suicide and earned the name Dr. Death. Throughout his career Dr. Kevorkian must fight to prove that what he was doing was not morally wrong because he was allowing his patients to die with dignity, and gave them free choice and he was working in the best interest of the patient. Dr. Kevorkian explains that his patients are not living they are slowly …show more content…

Kevorkian must prove to everyone that what he is doing is not morally wrong is to prove that what he is doing is not murder and he is working in the best interest of the patient. Countless times Dr. Kevorkian is brought to court for the actions he committed but charges are dropped because assisting a suicide is not a crime. Dr. Kevorkian argues that what he is doing is not murder because it is not against the patients will; he is just providing his patients with the means and they are using their own free will to choose to go through with it. Dr. Kevorkian explains to his patients that it is illegal for him to administer the injections and that the patients will have to administer the medications to themselves. He always gives his patients the opportunity to not go through with it, stating that it will not hurt his feelings if they decide to stop but his patients use their power of free choice to decide what is best for themselves. Those that argued against Dr. Kevorkian could try to use ethical relativism by Loius Pojman to argue that they are right. Ethical Relativism states that there are no universal moral principles but there are moral principles based on culture and individual choice. Skeptics could argue that since most people in the United States believed that what Dr. Kevorkian was doing was unethical and not morally okay then he should be

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