Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia

Physician Assisted Suicide

Jaclyn Donohue

Drexel University Introduction The issue revolving around assisted suicide for the terminally ill is a controversial topic. Whereas some groups and organizations are for this act, others such as religious organizations continuously oppose it by claiming it is an act of inhumanity. According to studies, assisted suicide is the act whereby a physician assists a patient who wishes to end his or her life by prescribing a lethal dose (Death with Dignity, 2015). Although people have always associated assisted suicide with euthanasia, studies show that the two are totally different. This is because in assisted suicide, the physician only provides the prescription of the lethal dose to the patient

Whereas one group claims that the action is ethical since the patient is assisted to get rid of the unbearable pain that he or she is going through, another group is against this idea by claiming that the act is totally unethical since it directly violates the physicians’ traditional role of saving lives (Starks, Dudzinski & White, 2013). In my opinion, I tend to believe that assisted suicide should not be condoned in health institutions since it is unethical. This is based on the fact that no one has the right to end another person’s life. Although assisted suicide involves the patient ending his or her life, this normally happens with the consent of a physician who prescribed the lethal drug. Despite the fact that physicians have always claimed that they don’t administer the dosage, so long as they provided the lethal drug is enough proof that they participated in ending the life of a person, hence, violating their traditional

This is because everybody has the right to life, hence, coming up with laws depicting people that are worth living and those that are worth dying is quite a disrespectful act to the human species (Anderson, 2015). Many religions claim that assisted suicide is an immoral act due to a number of reasons. For instance, apart from the act diminishing the sanctity of life, assisted suicide is also a violation of God’s teachings. For instance, the Catholic Church believes that since God is the source of life, remains the exceptional figure with the right to take away someone’s life (La Salette, 2015). Similarly, religions also believe that God is a healer and that there is no sickness that is beyond his power. There have been numerous cases where people that were initially diagnosed with a terminal disease but managed to recover from the illness and continued living a normal life. Hence, in my opinion, instead of proposing assisted suicide every time a person is diagnosed with a terminally illness, physicians should continue offering their services as usual since this might result in their recovery. Physicians are human beings too, and they are prone to make mistakes once in a while performing their duties. There have been numerous cases of patient misdiagnosis (Mitchell, 2007). For instance, a patient’s ailment may be misdiagnosed for a terminal illness, hence resulting to the