Physician-Assisted Suicide Case Study

Death is a natural process that will be experienced by everyone at some point, desirably at the end of a long, well lived life. The reality is that no one knows when that time will come or how it will happen. Unfortunately, for the terminally ill, death is in the near future and it is a sobering reality. Therefore, when that time comes, people need to know that they will have options, and the assurance that death does not have to be an agonizing end. They can choose to endure the annihilating pain that comes with the disease and allow it to take its natural course or choose to put an end to it, surrounded by those who love them.

In the article “Physician-Assisted Death in the United States: Are the Existing “Last Resorts” Enough?” Timothy Quill, advocated for PAD writes, “Patients who are worried about future suffering and wonder what options would be available to them”(20). One example is, people who undergo surgery for various reasons. Everyone knows that there are risks associated with any surgery and there are those who want to know what options are available to them should they become incapacitated in any way. In the article “The Final Decision; Quadriplegic MP Stevenson Fletcher Champions Physician-Assisted Death”, author Andrew Duffy describes how a young man named Steven Fletcher felt after a car accident left him unable to paralyzed from the neck down.

One of the main objections to autonomy-based justifications of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) that Gill talks about is that many people believe it does not promote autonomy, but instead is actually taking it away (366). First, it is important to clarify what autonomy means. According to Gill, it is the ability of a person to make big decisions regarding their own life (369). Opponents of PAS argue that it takes away a person’s ability to make these big decisions and so it is intrinsically wrong for them to choose to take their own life.

Physician-assisted suicide is here to help aid in the area of the terminally ill, and today it still remains illegal. This is one of the areas that cannot be ignored and yet here it stands,

Though, in this paper, I have addressed several points that Dennis Plaisted has presented on why we should not legalize physician assisted suicide due to the issues with autonomy that convince the public that the state does not care enough to preserve the lives of those with less than six months to live. I argued that the limits of who and when an ill patient may be allowed to receive PAS are present for the state to relieve the pain of the ill who wish to have control over their death, and that it is only an alternative option for those patients. I considered a counterargument to my criticism, which argues that the state and doctors shouldn’t allow for PAS, as it gives the impression that the state does not care about the lives of the terminally ill. Just as well, the reputation of doctors as healers would be compromised if they supported this form of treatment. However, I explained that the quality of life is more valuable than forcing someone who is ill to suffer until their natural death.

Certainly, it is cheaper to give one dose of pills that end a suffering patient’s life than to keep them alive with whatever means physicians must use. As a matter of fact, William E Barlow, PhD (2009) claims that medical care for cancer alone is estimated to have cost the United States 89 billion dollars in 2007 (p. S33). This number would not be so high if we allowed people to have terminal cancer to put an end to their suffering. Again, this only takes cancer into consideration; there are numerous other terminal diseases that lead to nothing but suffering during the last few months of one’s life.

First, Oregon was the front-runner in the world of physician-assisted suicide in the United States. In 1994, the state of Oregon passed the bill of a terminally ill individual’s right to die by lethal injection. Shortly after the passage of the bill, Oregon received their first challenge in the courts. In the case of Lee v. Oregon State, doctors and patients challenged Oregon, stating that the law violated the Constitution’s 1st and 14th amendments, as well as many other federal laws (Devlin, 1996). Due to this challenge in the courts, there was a temporary hold on the law.

The legalization of PAS under the DWDA influences the nursing profession because it gives patients an alternative option to the usual end of life care, also called hospice or palliative care. However, the American Nurses Association (ANA) position statement regarding PAS and euthanasia states that participation in these acts contradicts the Code for Nurses with Interpretive Statements and is discordant with the principles of the nursing profession as a whole (ANA Center for Ethics and Human Rights, 2013). The most similar alternative is palliative sedation, a practice in which high dose narcotics are administered to keep the patient comfortable; however, this may accelerate the patient’s death as the narcotics suppress the central nervous system

Physician assisted suicide is when a physician provides the means required to commit suicide, including prescribing lethal amounts of harmful drugs to a patient. In the United States alone, there is great controversy about physician assisted suicide. The issue is whether physician assisted suicide is murder or an act of sympathy for the patient. The main point is that terminally ill patients should have a right to physician assisted suicide if it meets their needs and is done properly. Physician assisted suicide is an appropriate action for the terminally ill that want to end their life in peace before it ends at the hands of the terminal disease.

When I was twelve years old, my grandfather passed away after a long, excruciating struggle with lung cancer. He endured months of insufferable agony, which continued until the mercy that came with his dying breath. Looking back on this experience, I am firm in my belief that nobody should have to endure the suffering that my grandfather did. This however, is just one instance in which physician-assisted suicide would have proven beneficial. According to the New York Times, Jerry Brown, who recently signed California’s own assisted suicide law said that if he were ill, it “would be a comfort to consider the options afforded by this bill” (Boffey 1).

The Right to Die 1) Introduction a) Thesis statement: Physician assisted suicide offers patients a choice of getting out of their pain and misery, presents a way to help those who are already dead mentally because of how much a disease has taken over them, proves to be a great option in many states its legal in, and puts the family at ease knowing their love one is out of pain. i) The use of physician assisted death is used in many different countries and some states. ii) Many people who chose this option are fighting a terminal illness.

Physician assisted suicide has been an intensely debated problem for years but if used properly, could be an effective way to help those who are suffering at the end of their life. Countless people have been advocating for physician assisted suicide for years and the most famous advocate for assisted suicide was Dr. Jack Kevorkian. He was a pathologist but received the nickname Dr. Death after it was estimated that between 1990 and 1999 he assisted 130 terminally ill individuals in their assisted suicides (“Jack Kevorkian”). Dr. Kevorkian is considered a crusader for physician

The medical field is filled with opportunities and procedures that are used to help improve a patient’s standard of living and allow them to be as comfortable as possible. Physician assisted suicide (PAS) is a method, if permitted by the government, that can be employed by physicians across the world as a way to ease a patient’s pain and suffering when all else fails. PAS is, “The voluntary termination of one's own life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician.”-Medicinenet.com. This procedure would be the patient’s decision and would allow the patient to end their lives in a more peaceful and comfortable way, rather than suffering until the illness takes over completely. Physician assisted suicide should be permitted by the government because it allows patients to end their suffering and to pass with dignity, save their families and the hospital money, and it allows doctors to preserve vital organs to save

The word “euthanize” means to bring about a person’s death to relieve them from serious distress. The topic of euthanasia in medicine has evolved since intensive care was first instituted. Before the 1950’s, a simple model was used to determine when someone was dead: the individual was dead when his or her heart stopped beating. In the modern light, the answer to this question isn’t as clear. With advancements in organ transplantation and other medical technologies, the stopping of a beating heart is no longer a definite death sentence.

Numerous legal issues are present in the trials of Dr. Kevorkian. All the issues circulate around the question, is Dr. Kevorkian’s actions in assisting a person with suicide and sometimes personally ending the person’s life considered murder if they want to willfully die? This issue cannot be easily solved, that is why to this day it is still argued in legislation. It contains an objective legal aspect, but a subjective moral, therefore until one is personally in that tragic situation, they cannot really state what is the right or wrong thing to do. A large issue in this case was not only that Dr. Kevorkian was assisting people in committing suicide, which is illegal in the state of Michigan, but he was also using doctor issued medicine and practicing without a medicine license.