Essays on Assisted Suicide

Introduction

One of the most controversial issues during the last few years is the right to assisted suicide. It is a burning topic that raises debates all over the world, and patients with terminal illnesses insist on been given the right to choose whether they can end their life, with the help of a physician or not. Those against point mainly to their religious beliefs and morals to reject assisted suicide. Physicians are also divided on this matter because, to them; the line between providing relief from dying and killing is extremely thin and vaguely defined. No matter how viewpoints ...

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Life has to get to an end. Every person has to taste the death. However, the type of death depends on the person's fate. Some people face death without going through any consequences while some has to undergo severe physical or emotional pain before death. Death can be natural or forced the death, which happen unnaturally is due to a suicide attempt. People commit suicide when they no longer to live, or they have lost the will to live because of various factors. The problems or issues ...

Introduction

The topic euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide remains to be a topic of concern across various settings all around the globe. Speaking of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide, this connotes to the deliberate instigation of death of an individual for the sole benefit of that individual. The scope of physician-assisted suicide can be traced back to the close of the year 1990, when Dr. Kevorkian Jack, retired pathologist utilized assisted suicide to help one of his patients (Gorsuch 24). Since this episode, the topic on assisted suicide has evolved into one of the most equivocal topics. In fact, this topic has ...

A thesis in support of physician-assisted suicide

- Introduction:

My Thesis for this essay is “The Right to Die.”

The “Right to die” is fundamentally the decision of if a person has the right to choose to die when her/his life could be extended by life support. Through this thesis, I attempt to make an argument for this issue. I believe that a person must have the right to make this choice, legally and ethically. For the purpose of supporting my thesis; I will explain the historical and current system on the topic, the laws regarding euthanasia, real-life examples, and my recommendation why euthanasia should be legalized.
- The History and Present of Physician-Assisted Suicide:
Over ...

The term «euthanasia» has a Greek origin and it means a «good death» (pleasant, beautiful). In ancient Greece euthanasia had no medical meaning and meant a happy death for their country. An English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) introduced the term euthanasia into the scientific usage. In 1623 in his work «On the dignity and enhancement of science» (2008) he said that doctors not only have to restore health, but also relieve pain and anguish even when there is no hope. In such cases doctors have to make the death easy and quiet. In his work Bacon outlines the modern ...

- Introduction
Euthanasia, sometimes called assisted suicide, is the practice of allowing an individual suffering from a significant, terminal illness or injury to end their life before the injury or illness takes them. The idea of euthanasia is to allow the individual freedom from pain and suffering; proponents of the practice suggest that euthanasia allows people to avoid the pain and humiliation that can come from long-term palliative care.
Euthanasia is a process through which medical personnel or families help the patient to end his or her life. There are certain situations that are not considered euthanasia-- such as “ ...

On November 1, 2014 29-year-old Brittany Maynard committed suicide to spare herself a long drawn-out death from a stage 4 malignant brain tumor. Unlike many other Americans who commit suicide, Maynard announced her decision online weeks prior to her death and brought the issue of euthanasia into national headlines. Maynard’s family and physicians will not face charges because Maynard happened to live in Oregon, one of only five states that allows doctor-assisted euthanasia. The other states are Montana, Washington, Vermont and New Mexico. Maynard, originally from California, had to move herself and her family to Oregon in order ...

Introduction

The term “euthanasia” has been dubbed as a form of “mercy killing”, which can be accomplished by doing a particular act which is unlawful or by some act of omission that is considered as lawful. Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) had become the most talked about controversial issues around the world. Euthanasia is referred to as the administration of drugs with the explicit intention of terminating the life of the patient at his or her explicit request (Siu, 2010, p. 169). On the other hand, the physician-assisted suicide or “PAS” is recognized as the act of prescribing or supplying ...

The topic that I was assigned is the physician-assisted suicide. How is physician-assisted suicide viewed by the medical profession? Is physician-assisted suicide legal in the U.S? The ethical dilemma I am examining is, should this be a decision between a physician and the patients, or should it be controlled by the state? I believe this should be a matter that should be left between the physician and the patient.
A physician-assisted suicide refers to a situation where a medical practitioner or a physician facilitates the suicide of a patient. The process involves prescription of a controlled substance thus assisting ...

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In a 6-3 ruling, the United States Supreme Court jettisoned a significant hindrance to state initiatives to legalize “physician-assisted suicide.” In their decision, the High Bench ruled that then Attorney General John Ashcroft decided without any legal mandate in 2001 when the government moved against the adoption of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The decision removes a sizable obstacle to state policies such as the one in Oregon, which is the only state in the United States that allows physician-assisted suicide.
Though the Court’s ruling was founded on general administrative law, the decision was heavily ...

Introduction

Death, a journey all must embark on where none can ever turn back and this is a part of life that no one wants to deal with let alone deal with when it comes to a dying relative. However, there has been a lot of talk recently about physician assisted suicide when it comes to a dying relative and some physicians feel it is their obligatory duty to relieve that dying person of any pain that they might be experiencing. Some people feel that it is easier to do this to spare the dying of their pain depending on ...

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The word suicide implies self-killing, and it may be either assisted or unassisted. Physician-assisted suicide falls under the category of assisted suicide where the person providing backing is the doctor. A doctor assisting a patient of terminal cancer in taking his own life by providing him with the means or the information necessary for committing self-killing would be an example of physician-assisted suicide. The word euthanasia, also referred to as mercy killing, is often used synonymously with assisted suicide. It is a Greek word where ‘eu’ means right, and ‘Thanatos’ means death. The word euthanasia therefore ...

Medically Assisted Suicide- A Blessing for Patients in Terminal Conditions

Medically assisted suicide has been a topic of argument for several years and numerous cases are presented in courts where patients in terminal conditions and their relatives request for medically assisted suicide.
If government makes assisted suicide legal, many people can misuse this facility but it is a blessing for those who are in imminent terminal condition and long for death rather than the pain they are suffering. For instance one of my close relative of about 65 years was in coma for seven years and was alive through feeding tubes. Through medically assisted suicide, he got relief from ...

Suicide and suicide attempts in the western world have long been considered criminal and punishable. Ancient Romans and Greeks prohibited most suicide, or suicide among the healthy, and punished those who committed suicide by denying them proper burial rituals (Rosenfeld 24). In England and the American colonies, laws continued to punish individuals who committed suicide by denying them a proper burial and both English and American laws found anyone assisting in suicide potentially guilty of murder. In the last several decades, questions about euthanasia and, specifically, the legality of physician-assisted suicide have repeatedly found their way into the legal ...

This paper is about whether physician assisted suicide should be allowed. Euthanasia has always been a controversial issue all over the world. This paper will look at physician assisted suicide and the arguments against and the arguments for as brought out by some philosophers like Kant and Jean Paul Satre. We will start with the arguments against physician assisted suicide, the arguments for and also other elements like the Hippocratic Oath which plays a major role in this topic of physician assisted suicide.
There are many philosophers who do not support physician assisted suicide. One of these philosophers is ...

English

Before I answer the question: “Should suicide or assisted suicide be legalized,” I would like to define first what suicide is. The term suicide means the killing of oneself. It is also known by the following synonyms or hyponyms: assisted suicide, felo-de-se, self-destruction, self-annihilation, seppuku, suttee, or hara-kiri. Similarly, assisted suicide is defined as the act of deliberately giving assistance or even encouraging an individual to commit or attempt to commit suicide. Many people consider suicide or assisted suicide are terminating one’s own life due to various psychological, financial, familial, communal, pathological, etc. reasons. Whether it is the ...

This essay discusses the laws concerning euthanasia in the United Kingdom and in other countries of the world. It also discusses the meanings of and the differences between the terms euthanasia (sometimes called “mercy killing”), terminal sedation and assisted suicide. According to “Euthanasia Statistics (July 2012), over half of all doctors support euthanasia, as do about 86 percent of members of the public surveyed, yet there are so few places where it is legal.
As Rhodes (2013) states, such issues “are highly controversial and opinions on whether they should be legalised are split.” As she also states, there are ...

End of life alternatives: physician assisted suicide and continue sedation

Introduction
Today, many people are dying in hospitals due to chronic disease which often call for a decision regarding the end of life. Sometimes, these decisions lead to the shortening of life and have often roused immense debate based on ethical implications. “Physician Assisted suicide” (PAS) remains one of the most debated subjects in ethical circles. This is whereby the physician provides a patient, at their own request, with a lethal form of medication which is self-administered by the patient. On the other hand, Continuous Sedation (CS) when used at the end of life takes or reduces the patient’ ...

Assisted suicide

Recently in the newspapers there was a man who killed his wife who was suffering from stage four cancer. In his defense, he said that the wife had asked him to kill her in order for her to stop feeling pain. The wife was no longer responding to pain medication and was in agony for several weeks. This act of mercy killing is called euthanasia.

Euthanasia

Euthanasia is defined as the intentional killing of people in order to relieve them from pain and suffering. Euthanasia is a hotly debated topic. Critics believe that mercy killing is unethical. They believe that ...

Euthanasia is defined as the procedure when “someone other than the 'patient'—a doctor, nurse or someone else—performs an action, such as a lethal injection, which brings about death” (Glover). Assisted-suicide occurs when an individual, usually a doctor, enlists the aid to end one’s own life, without participating in the killing directly (Glover). However, pulling out the plug of a life sustaining machine or refuse treatment is not considered physician-assisted suicide and it is legal in most states, since it is perceived as allowing nature to take its course (Oregon Right to Life). Euthanasia and whether one ...

Introduction

Physician-assisted suicide has been subject to much global public debate. As the topic on human rights continues to gain momentum and make waves across the consciousness of people all over the world, humanity also continues to expand the scope and coverage of their rights. The right to death, as best manifested by physician-assisted suicide, is one such right. Highly controversial, this particular right brings forth some important questions. Firstly, when does one’s right to death begin? Secondly, to what extent should the physician take responsibility for the person who requested for death? Finally, on a personal note, can ...

Personality and developmental theorists have always been embroiled in controversies of one type or another. By the very nature it is controversial theorizing. The study of people and how they interact and how they respond may seem alarming to many. Freud developed his theories of psychodynamics that, while not wholly discredited, have fallen out of academic favor (Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry, 2005, p. 774). Freud was and remains controversial for both his use of drugs and postulations on the role sexuality plays in developing the psyche. Erikson, a student of Freud’s, seemingly tried to sanitize the sexual aspects ...

Jeff Stephenson

The Debate of Quality of Life as it Relates to End of Life Decisions
In 1990, Terri Schiavo had a heart attack that placed her in a vegetative state for over a decade. The debate that surfaced as a result of her ailment had an enormous impact on how Americans viewed clinical autonomy. Clinical autonomy is the ability to appoint a person the control of your treatment in case you are not able to. Unconscious and unable to even feed herself, Terri was considered a “vegetable.” Prior to having a cardiac arrest, Terri had legally appointed her husband as ...

Terminal illness is a sickness which is not curable and eventually, those suffering from such an illness die after some duration of time, mostly six months. People with terminal illness usually are given medication to allow them prolong their life beyond the set duration but they cannot be cured completely due to lack of medication fit to cure these diseases, (Mai,2006). However, people with this kind of diseases can be given a chance to end their life rather than endure the pain caused by the disease. This is known as assisted suicide. It occurs where the sick person ...

In this essay I intend to explore the ethical implications of assisted suicide and discuss why this debate is still raging when many countries today have a solution to prolonged suffering to justify my conclusion that everyone should have the right to choose the time of their death if there is no other recourse. Topics I will explore in more detail is the right to die, then I will talk about the legality of suicide and then I will move on to the delicate matter of someone assisting someone else in their suicide.
In this section we will be ...

Introduction

Summary
This article sheds light for the argument for and against the legalization of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in the United States. The group surveyed a sample of physicians from US who have likelihood of caring the dying patients. The study aims to determine the needs for assistance wit euthanasia or suicide and compliance to such needs.
The findings of the study indicated that 54 percent of the patients who received lethal injection did not make the decision. As a result family members and physicians felt obliged to hasten the death of the patient.
Summary
The article provides a ...

Michele Causse ingested 15g of powdered Nembutal, dissolved in 60ml of normal tap water, ending her life. In Switzerland it’s legal to assist someone in ending their life if it is not done for egotistical reasons. Michele Causse loved life but didn’t want it to lose form; she’s basically saying that although she loves life it’s all downhill from here because of her health. Life is only going to get worse, so she wants to end on her terms instead of slowly deteriorating into a creature that can’t feed itself. She already can’t ...

The debate on euthanasia is certainly a charged one. Who can forget the tension of the Terri Schiavo case, so well publicized in the late 1990s and early 2000s? That very public battle over the fate of a single woman who would certainly never achieve a quality of life most would consider worth living was something that many Americans experienced in a far-too-personal way. In the end, her husband, Michael, was granted the legal right to remove her feeding tube, despite the objections of her parents. They were very much opposed to any such assisted death, although, to be ...

Writing a Claim of Policy Essay

Claim- There should be a universal standard regarding the legality of physician-assisted suicide.
1. Overview, Purpose and historical background

Definition of Terms

Some of the key terms in this paper that the reader needs to be conversant with include, suicide, assisted suicide, and physician assisted suicide. Kopelman and De Ville write that suicide is the taking of one’s life without being forced by from one’s self will. This means that when a suicide is committed, the victim has the willingness to die with him or herself. Kopelman and De Ville continue to explain that an action is considered as physician ...

Introduction

The definition of physician assisted suicide is slightly different from the general term definition of euthanasia. Although some may equate physician assisted suicide with the blanket term, the distinction between euthanasia and physician assisted suicide is that the latter is done with both the patient’s and doctor’s intent to end the patient’s life by unnatural means (Tamayo-Vela´zquez, Simo´n-Lorda, and Cruz-Piqueras, 678). The doctor assists the patient in committing suicide, usually by administering an injection or pill that contains a lethal substance. A doctor may also administer a relaxant to help keep the patient calm ...

People with Disabilities and Their Families

Assisted Suicide
Introduction
Death is usually considered to be something appalling that everyone should avoid or overcome. However, no matter how modernized our medical technologies are, dying is an unavoidable thing in life. In this regard, there are concerns involving physician assisted suicide that can be depicted as a proceeding wherein the patient is agreeable to end their suffering with the assistance of a physician. Physician assisted kind of suicide or death is a process of prescribing a certain medication to a patient with an intention of ending his or her own life by way of eliminating the extreme ...

Physician-assisted suicide has been a controversial topic within the medical sector. Over a prolonged period of time, employees within the medical field have maintained a long tradition of making sure that the life of a patient is protected no matter the cost. However, there has been a shift in this tradition over the recent past. Some medical practitioners have begun to embrace the decisions of patients about what they would like to do with their own lives. This accounts for the reason as no why many doctors have been known to aid patients in their death. The embracement of ...

One of the most difficult subjects for people to talk about is death. People may joke about it; for example, making outrageous predictions for their own deaths saying things like, “My death will be caused by being eaten by a great white shark!” However, people tend to avoid serious discussions about death with others such as family; people even avoid an introspective self-dialogue about death, neglecting creating documents such as wills and advance directives. When imminent death or a lengthy terminal illness arrive on the horizon, it may come as a surprise even to those who have lived a ...

Physician assisted suicide (PAS) has been one of the most controversial and sensitive issues facing the healthcare industry in most countries today (Burt 567). PAS normally occur when a physician gets involved in helping a patient take their own life through the writing of a prescription, advice, lethal medication, or giving a patient crucial information that can enable them to take their own life. Someone can describe it as a doctor providing a gun to a patient, and the patient pulling the trigger (Manning 248). PAS tends to have a similar moral goal with euthanasia, which is normally premature ...

Abstract

Physician –assisted suicide or euthanasia, which means terminating a person’s life, painlessly, with a ‘humane’ motive of putting an end to his suffering, has been going on for centuries. Though it is practiced widely, it is a highly debated issue and there is a lot of controversy surrounding it. In some countries, it is legalized, whereas it is still considered to be illegal in many other countries. However, today, most of the population, including the society as well as physicians, are in favor of this practice. If the benefits and harms of the practice are to be weighed, ...

This paper covers the brief history of the physician assistant occupation to provide insight into the circumstances under which that profession was developed and continues to examine the contemporary education requirements and roles of physician assistants in healthcare. By observing the contemporary education requirements and roles of physician assistants in healthcare, it is possible to notice that physician assistants are cost-effective, and they produce positive impacts in both economy and healthcare. Although physician assistants are trained to perform diagnostic tests, assign treatments, and help physicians alleviate some of their time to treat more patients, contemporary healthcare places significant emphasis ...

Assisted suicide has been a controversial issue not only between physicians in the United States but also between states and the federal government. For example the state of Oregon has been working tireless towards legalizing assisted suicide while the federal government on the other hand has been trying its best to make sure that assisted suicide becomes illegal throughout the United States (Pretzer, 2000, pp.2). Both sides across the divide have very strong arguments and justification of the position they take pertaining to this contentious issue. There are four important points on both sides that justify their stands ...

Physician assisted suicide is a suicide accomplish with the aid of a physician. In some cases, the term is used interchangeably with euthanasia, which refers to the act of ending the life of an individual suffering from an incurable condition or terminal illness, by using lethal injection or suspending the use of extraordinary medical treatment (Humphrey 3). The important issue is that it is assisted death rather than allowing natural death to take place. Physician assisted suicide is an issue of contention which stirs global conflict with various countries differing strongly on their legal stances towards the issue. Currently, ...

The latest NPR-Truven Health Analytics poll showed that most US citizens favoured the idea of physician-assisted suicides for patients who are terminally ill and who have less than just 6 months to live.1
Physician –assisted suicide (PAS) was a major development in the United States in the 1990s, but it also became a significant ethical and legal issue. The physician’s role in assisting the patient to terminate his life is always with a good intention and is to always comfort the patient when hopes from further treatments have faded. When a pain - wracked patient begs for his ...

Assisted suicide is also called physician-assisted suicide. Assisted suicide involves a doctor administering a lethal dose of medication to a patient who voluntarily accepts to commit suicide. This process must be conducted by a physician. Assisted suicide is not legal in many countries. In the USA, the practice is only legal in Oregon State. Assisted suicide has raised a heated debate on whether it should be legalized or not. Efforts to legalize the practice have raised controversy and it is said that congress could outlaw the practice altogether. There are several arguments for and against assisted suicide.
Assisted suicide ...