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Death with dignity act
The ethical dilemma of physician assisted suicide
Legal aspects of physician-assisted suicide
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Imagine being told you only had so long to live and that you wouldn’t be able to do anything for yourself due to the amount of pain you're in. Imagine all of your family remembering you as weak and sick instead of how you lived the rest of your life, now imagine you can do something about that. This is the choice so many people in Oregon are glad to have, the choice to end their life with doctor assisted suicide when faced with a terminal illness. Steve Mason received assisted suicide after being told he only had six months to live, he says he wanted control over his death as much as his life, he will choose when and where it happens he says "I lived my life with dignity, I want to go out the same way." Assisted suicide is when a doctor prescribes a lethal prescription knowing that the patient plans to use them to commit suicide, this does not include refusing a ventilator or other life saving measures. Everyone should have a right to control their own life, so with certain provisions i believe everyone should be given the right to doctor assisted suicide when they face a disease that will be terminal guaranteeing they have no pain, and can choose where and when they pass.
The law in Oregon is very specific in how it should be used and when a doctor can prescribe these medications. In Oregon, the Death with Dignity Act allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs to patients who have been diagnosed by not one but two physicians as having a terminal illness and less than six months to live. Patients only qualify is if they are fully conscious when making the decision and are able to administer the lethal dose without the help of anyone else. While there is no oversight to protect patients from abuse of these laws, it is their choice w...
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...ll them slowly and painfully. No one wants their family members to remember them as sick weak but rather as happy and healthy and this gives the patients a way to do that.
Works Cited
Oregon Right to Life. “Assisted Suicide in Oregon Does Not Have Adequate Safeguards.” Assisted Suicide. Ed. Noël Merino. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. Current Controversies. Rpt. from “Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Experience: Safeguards Don’t Work.” 2010. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
Roosevelt, Margot. “Choosing Their Time.” Time 28 Mar. 2005: n. pag. Print.
Smith, Michael. “There Is No Evidence of a Slippery Slope with Right-to-Die Laws.”The Right to Die. Ed. John Woodward. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2006. At Issue. Rpt. from “No ‘Slippery Slope’ Found with Physician Assisted Suicide.”MedPage Today. 2009. Opposing Viewpoints in Context. Web. 6 Dec. 2013.
¨ If I cannot give my consent to my own death, whose body is this? Who owns my life?- Sue Rodriguez. If one cannot choose when they die and how they go out, then are we really the owner of our life and body? Physician assisted suicide is the practice of providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life. When the patient is terminally ill and is in a lot of pain they should be able to end their own life instead of waiting for it to end itself. Even though some argue that physician assisted suicide is not a humane way of dying it still stops the patient´s suffering and gives them peace of mind.
The Death with Dignity Act was passed in Oregon in 1994, and it is another option for dying with those who have terminal diseases. These people that want to die with dignity have to be seen by at least two doctors and have six or less months to live. While making the decision to use this act, the patient must be in a safe mental state to be making this decision. Currently, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and soon to be California are the only states to carry the Death with Dignity Act. (Death)
Imagine a family member being extremely ill and suffering from day to day. When they decide they cannot take the pain any more, would you want them to pull through for you or would you fulfill their dying wish and let the doctor pull the plug? Could you even make a decision? Many people would not allow such an event to happen because with all the pain and confusion the patient is enduring may cause confusion and suicidal tendencies. However, there are people who believe otherwise. This is called physician-assisted suicide. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is a controversial topic that causes much debate. Though it is only legal in the three states Oregon, Washington and Montana, there are many people who are for it and think it can be necessary. Even with morals put aside, Physician-assisted suicide should be illegal because it will be a huge violation of the oath every doctor must abide by, there would be no real way to distinguish between people who are suffering and the people who are faking or depressed, and it causes a lot of confusion to people with new diseases or new strands of disease that does not have a clear cure.
Assisted suicide should be legalized nationwide in the United States, because every human deserves a peaceful death. Assisted suicide is when person that has been told they are terminally ill and won’t survive, they can go to a doctor and get prescribed a medication that results in death. It’s not murder, it’s giving the person a chance to say their good byes and leave this world when they are ready to go. Not making them suffer and go on when they don’t want to.
In 1994, Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act. This law states that Oregon residents, who have been diagnosed with a life ending disease and have less than six months to live, may obtain a lethal medicine prescribed by a physician, which would end their life when and where they chose to do so. This law or act requires the collection of data from patients and physicians and publishes it in an annual r...
Did you know, about 57% of physicians today have received a request for physician assisted suicide due to suffering from a terminally ill patient. Suffering has always been a part of human existence, and these requests have been occurring since medicine has been around. Moreover, there are two principles that all organized medicine agree upon. The first one is physicians have a responsibility to relieve pain and suffering of dying patients in their care. The second one is physicians must respect patients’ competent decisions to decline life-sustaining treatment. Basically, these principles state the patients over the age of 18 that are mentally stable have the right to choose to end their life if they are suffering from pain. As of right now, Oregon, Washington, and Vermont have legalized physician assisted suicide through legislation. Montana has legalized it via court ruling. The first Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) became effective in Oregon in 1997. Washington and Vermont later passed this act in 2009, and Montana passed the Rights of the Terminally Ill Act in 2008. One concern with physician assisted suicide is confusion of the patient’s wishes. To get rid of any confusion and provide evidence in case someone becomes terminally ill, people should make an advanced care plan. The two main lethal drugs that are used during physician assisted suicide are secobarbital and pentobarbital. Appropriate reporting is necessary when distributing these drugs and performing the suicide in order to publish an analysis. Studies found a large number of people accepted this procedure under certain circumstances; therefore, physician assisted suicide should be legal in the United States because terminally ill patients over the age of 18 that are...
Terminally ill patients should have the legal option of physician-assisted suicide. Terminally ill patients deserve the right to control their own death. Legalizing assisted suicide would relive families of the burdens of caring for a terminally ill relative. Doctors should not be prosecuted for assisting in the suicide of a terminally ill patient. We as a society must protect life, but we must also recognize the right to a humane death. When a person is near death, in unbearable pain, they have the right to ask a physician to assist in ending their lives.
Oftentimes when one hears the term Physician Assisted Suicide (hereafter PAS) the words cruel and unethical come to mind. On October 27, 1997 Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act, this act would allow terminally ill Oregon residents to end their lives through a voluntary self-administered dose of lethal medications that are prescribed by a physician (Death with Dignity Act) . This has become a vital, medical and social movement. Having a choice should mean that a terminally ill patient is entitled to the choice to pursue PAS. If people have the right to refuse lifesaving treatments, such as chemo and palliative care, then the choice of ending life with PAS should be a choice that is allowed.
Should terminally ill patients have the right to choose how they would like to die? There ar...
Pereira, J. (2011). Legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide: The illusion of safeguards and controls. Retrieved November 29, 2016, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/
One of the most controversial end-of-life decisions is “physician-assisted suicide” (PAS). This method of suicide involves a physician providing a patient, at his or her own request, with a lethal dose of medication, which the patient self-administers. The ethical acceptability and the desirability of legalization of this practice both continue to cause controversy (Raus, Sterckx, Mortier 1). Vaco v. Quill and Washington v. Glucksberg were landmark decisions on the issue of physician-assisted suicide and a supposed Constitutional right to commit suicide with another's assistance. In Washingotn v. Glucksberg, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the state of Washington's ban on physician-assisted suicide was not unconstitutional. Justices noted that while terminally ill patients on life support have legal right to refuse all treatment, terminally ill patients who are not on life support lack this right. Although the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a ban on physician-assisted suicide was not unconstitutional, individual states were free to enact laws permitting physician-assisted suicide. Not long after this ruling, Oregon passed adopted the Death with Dignity Act (DWDA) permitting physician-assisted suicide under certain conditions (State of Oregon 1995). More recently, Oregon's neighbor state Washington also enacted a law allowing physician-assisted suicide – the Washington Death with Dignity Act (State of Washington 2008) (Raus, Sterckx, Mortier 2).
Cotton, Paul. "Medicine's Position Is Both Pivotal And Precarious In Assisted Suicide Debate." The Journal of the American Association 1 Feb. 1995: 363-64.
Assisted suicide brings up one of the biggest moral debates currently circulating in America. Physician assisted suicide allows a patient to be informed, including counseling about and prescribing lethal doses of drugs, and allowed to decide, with the help of a doctor, to commit suicide. There are so many questions about assisted suicide and no clear answers. Should assisted suicide be allowed only for the terminally ill, or for everyone? What does it actually mean to assist in a suicide? What will the consequences of legalizing assisted suicide be? What protection will there be to protect innocent people? Is it (morally) right or wrong? Those who are considered “pro-death”, believe that being able to choose how one dies is one’s own right.
[2] R. M. Walker, "Physician- assisted suicide: the legal slippery slope," Cancer Control : Journal of the Moffitt Cancer Center, vol. 8, pp. 25, 2001.
If physician-assisted suicide is legally permitted yet restricted to the terminally ill adult with full decision-making capacity, it will certainly raise legal concerns about discrimination. PAS will probably broaden to include incompetent, non-consenting, and non–terminally ill persons. The final extreme of the slippery slope argument is that PAS will be abused, run amok and ultimately become involuntary euthanasia. Physician-assisted suicide refers to the physician acting indirectly in the death of the patient -- providing the means for death.