Assisted Suicide: The End of Suffering

Huge purple, grape-like masses are what a man named Richard Chinn saw under a patient's chin when he went to work for a hospital. This patient was diagnosed with cancer, and those huge masses were the cancerous tumor. When this man would eat, the cancerous growth would start collecting food, of whatever he didn't swallow quickly. When it would start growing to about grapefruit size, or larger, the doctors would amputate it. However, this did not do much justice, because the growth would just come back. Amputation after amputation made the patient very uneasy and want to end his life. He and his family numerously asked doctors to put him out of his misery, and even went to court, but he was still told "no." There was no more point to this man's life, he was suffering miserably and the cancer would never go away. Eventually he came down with ammonia, and instead of trying to revive him, they finally let him have his peace (Chinn). If Euthanasia was legal, then this suffering man could have ended his pain early, but due to complications in the legal system, his life was drug out too long.

Euthanasia is defined as a painless, happy and easy death, which is derived from the Greek words Eu Thanatos. Looking back to ancient Greece and Rome, Euthanasia was practiced regularly. If they saw a person suffering miserably and they could do nothing for them, they would end their life early by feeding them poison. However, throughout time religion was increased, and the life of a human being was viewed as sacred. Because of this, euthanasia was slowly portrayed as wrong ("The Controversy").

There are two main types of euthanasia- passive and active. Although both are illegal in all states but Oregon, passive euthanasia is easier for people to accept. Passive involves taking a person off of their life support, and letting them die naturally, while active is ending a suffering persons life prematurely, by helping them die, with an overdose of medication (A Euthanasia Glossary). Although Euthanasia is not widely accepted, nor legal, there are people who try to break the rules.

Jack Kevorkian, a retired pathologist, was convicted of first-degree murder, in March of 1999, and will spend 10-25 years in prison. He injected a man named Thomas Youk with a deadly level of medicine and killed him.