Euthanasia Essay - The Immorality of Physician Assisted Suicide

Euthanasia: the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit, a highly controversial subject. Assisted suicide: Someone provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life. When a doctor helps another person to kill themselves it is called "physician assisted suicide" (Euthanasia.com 1). This widely debated topic of assisted suicide is immoral and unethical in today's standards.

Most people who commit suicide or wish to commit suicide are mentally ill and make impaired judgments. Many of those who wish to commit suicide are really just reaching out for help, and disorders such as depression, which lead to attempted suicide, are treatable (Pretzer 1). For those people suffering with chronic pain from, there have been many advances in pain control and management. Today in the United States, Physician Assisted Suicide or PAS is illegal in all states except for Oregon. If PAS were to be legalized in the rest of the country, it would cause major problems. In the one state that Physician Assisted Suicide is legal there have been major problems and any unhappy people.

Mentally ill patients have been stereotyped as crazy people who have to be locked away so they don't hurt themselves or anyone else. This is a reality only for a very small portion of mentally handicapped persons. The majority of the mentally ill are fully capable of living on their own and making just decisions. They are not a danger to anyone except themselves. These people are classified as clinically depressed and have a chemical imbalance in their brains that impairs their perspective about their lives. People suffering from depression are the ones who g...

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...d on the alternatives to assisted suicide.

Works Cited

Anderson, Kerby. Euthanasia in Oregon. Probe Ministries. 13 Nov. 2001

http://www.probe.org/docs/c-euthan.html>.

Cannon, John. Another Look at Euthanasia. Independent Press Association. 13

Nov. 2001 http://www.anotherperspective.org/advoc158.html

Euthanasia.com. Euthanasia Definitions. 13 Nov. 2001

http://www.euthanasia.com/definitions.html

Langley, Tamora. Physician Assisted Suicide. Voluntary Euthanasia Society.

15 Nov. 2001 http://www.ves.org.uk/Deb_PhyAssSu.html

O'Bannon, Randall K., and Burke, J. Balch. Why We Shouldn't Legalize

Assisted Suicide. National Right to Life. 13 Nov. 2001

http://nrlc.org/euthanasia/asisuid1.html

Pretzer, Michael. Assisted Suicide: Should it be Legal? CNN.com. 15 Nov. 2001

http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/01/25/assisted.suicide.wmd/.