The Pros And Cons Of Physician

1. (problem – PAS): In today’s society, Physician Assisted Suicide is one of the most questionable and debatable issues. Many people feel that it is wrong for people to ask their doctor to help them end their life; while others feel it is their right to choose between the right to life and the right to death. “Suffering has always been a part of human existence.” (PAS) “Physicians have no similar duty to provide actions, such as assistance in suicide, simply because they have been requested by patients. In deciding how to respond to patients ' requests, physicians should use their judgment about the medical appropriateness of the request.” (Bernat, JL) Physician Assisted Suicide differs from withholding or discontinuing medical treatment, it consists of doctors providing a competent patient with a prescription for medication to aid in the use to end their life.

This assignment will discuss a case involving an individual known to me. It centres on the real and contentious issue of the “right to die”, specifically in the context of physician-assisted death. This issue is widely debated in the public eye for two reasons. The first considers under what conditions a person can choose when to die and the second considers if someone ever actually has a ‘right to die’. The following analysis will consider solutions to the ethical dilemma of physician-assisted death through the lens of three ethical theories. It will also take into account the potential influence of an individual’s religious beliefs

In homes across the world, millions of victims are suffering from fatal and terminal illnesses.With death knocking on their door, should these people have to endure pain and misery knowing what is to come? The answers to these questions are very controversial. Furthermore, there is a greater question to be answered—should these people have the right and option to end the relentless pain and agony through physician assisted death? Physician-Assisted Suicide PAS is highly contentious because it induces conflict of several moral and ethical questions such as who is the true director of our lives. Is suicide an individual choice and should the highest priority to humans be alleviating pain or do we suffer for a purpose? Is suicide a purely

The issue arises once more in the arguments concerning Euthanasia. Euthanasia, otherwise termed as “mercy killing” presents the option of a medical professional assisting a chronically ill, competent patient, in his/her own death. The argument for this is based around the a person’s quality of life. If the patient has no quality of life and is never going to improve, why let them suffer? In order to determine if an individual should be allowed to end their life, we must first determine if this individual can be considered a person. If so, then a person has a right to a good quality of life, and should be allowed to decide if he/she will continue living in misery. If not, then a doctor must do what is medically best, ie: keep the individual alive as long as possible.

Thesis: When it comes to the topic of physician-assisted suicide (PAS), some experts believe that an individual should have the option of ending their life in the event that they have been given six months to live with a terminal illness or when the quality of their life has been vastly changed. Where this argument usually ends, however, is on the question whether physician-assisted suicide is medically ethical, would be overly abused to the point where doctors might start killing patients without their consent. Whereas some experts are convinced that just improving palliative care would decrease the need for someone to want to end their life before it happened naturally.

The moral and ethical aspects of physician-assisted suicide are important ones that shouldn’t be overlooked.  In virtually all cases of assisted suicide the pain and suffering experienced by the patient is unrelievable.  Although it is important to go to great lengths to try and ease the suffering through traditional medicine, often times it’s just not enough.  When the traditional approach fails sometimes more drastic approaches are necessary.  One such measure that has come to be highly controversial in this decade is physician-assisted suicide.  This form of suicide is hotly debated because it isn’t just a mere suicide, but a planned out social contract between two or more people.  The basis for my argument for assisted suicide rests in the values of individual self-determination or autonomy and individual well-being.  Self-determination is central to the issue because a person should be able to choose how to live their life or in this case, how to die.

The ethics of physician assisted suicide has been one of the most prevalent debates regarding this issue. Major concerns are maintenance of dignity and preservation of the autonomy of the individual. Contemporary ethical theories have been dissected and interpreted to find reasons to both support and oppose physician-assisted suicide. For example, a deontologist, concerned solely with the intrinsic right or wrong-making characteristic of an action, regardless of consequence, would most likely deem this or any form of euthanasia completely unacceptable (Gula 1990). The fundamental criterion of deontology is conformity to moral duties. A practitioner of this ideology might argue that as moral agents, we have an absolute duty not to commit murder, and physician-assisted suicide, regardless of context and circumstance, is ultimately murder. Just as deontologists are concerned with the “Right”, utilitarian theorists are more concerned the “Good”. Utilitarianism, in contrast to deontology, is an ethical theory based on whether the consequences of

In today’s society, suicide, and more controversially, physician assisted suicide, is a hotly debated topic amongst both every day citizens and members of the medical community. The controversial nature of the subject opens up the conversation to scrutinizing the ethics involved. Who can draw the line between morality and immorality on such a delicate subject, between lessening the suffering of a loved one and murder? Is there a moral dissimilarity between letting someone die under your care and killing them? Assuming that PAS suicide is legal under certain circumstances, how stringent need be these circumstances? The patient must be terminally ill to qualify for voluntary physician-assisted suicide, but in the eyes of the non-terminal patients with no physical means to end their life, the ending of their pain through PAS may be worth their death; at what point is the medical staff disregarding a patient’s autonomy? Due to the variability of answers to these questions, the debate over physician-assisted suicide is far from over. However, real life occurrences happen every day outside the realm of debate and rhetoric, and decisions need to be made.

One may argue that assisted medical suicide is the same as taking a gun and blowing your own brains out. However, for those who may have watched a family member battle a disease such as cancer that destroys the human body, they may understand the point of assisted suicide and accept it as being ethical. In this essay we have examined ideas from both sides of this ethical dilemma and in the end it is up to each person to decide what is ethically and morally right for them.

The majority of people believe that life is granted by God and is only God who has the moral authority to take it away. However, it is not once or twice we have heard of people requesting physician assisted death or doctors carrying out euthanasia. The legislation to permit physician assisted suicide has been debated about comprehensively (NZIMANDE, 33). The physician assisted suicide is a situation where one is assisted to die by a physician after consultation. It should be noted that in physician assisted suicide; the physician does not do the killing; he/she only assist the patient in dying. The help can be through advice on the drug to use or a much easier way to die. The physician assisted suicide is not

Physician assisted suicide should be morally permissible. Patients who are in constant suffering and pain have the right to end their misery at their own discretion. This paper will explore my thesis, open the floor to counter arguments, explain my objections to the counter arguments, and finally end with my conclusion. I agree with Brock when he states that the two ethical values, self-determination and individual well-being, are the focal points for the argument of the ethical permissibility of voluntary active euthanasia (or physician assisted suicide). These two values are what drives the acceptability of physician assisted suicide because it is the patients who choose their treatment options and how they want to be medically treated. Patients are physically and emotionally aware when they are dying and in severe pain, therefore they can make the decision to end the suffering through the option of physician assisted suicide.

A positive effect of the bill for physicians according to (source) is that physician wages have increased faster in full-practice states than in restrictive-practice states. That is because as APNs assume a more independent role as primary care providers, physicians are able to focus their expertise on more complex and thus more costly cases (Texas Nurses Association, 2016).

Physician assisted suicide does not lead to abuses or down the hypothetical slope. Peter Rogatz, a physician, states that requesting someone to be taken off a ventilator is socially acceptable. What is the difference between assisted suicide and ending a ventilator? Does one have to be in coma or brain dead to allow him to die with dignity? These are the questions that patients and society are asking today. Rogatz asks these questions from a physician’s point of view and explains the pain that he has seen through suffering patient’s eyes. These questions alone are one factor that Rogatz is sickened by because he does not understand what in the world the difference should be between these two tragic events. The next point Rogatz explains is that people should see assisted suicide as a merciful end rather than killing. The word killing has such a strong meaning and that does not have any place in the right to die debate because killing is intentional without consent (134). Rogatz believes that the physicians who understand the plea for assisted suicide are doing good not harm. More often than not, the physicians responding to assisted suicide will handle the situation correctly. Rogatz does accept that there will be someone who will abuse this power, but that will not happen with everything physicians have as guidelines. According to Rogatz, physicians also have a strict criterion to even think about mentioning assisted suicide. The patients must qualify for assisted suicide. This factor alone also helps to eliminate abuses because physicians only can administer to a select number of terminally ill patients (134). Assisted suicide is not an act of murder and does not lead down a hypothetical slope.

Terminally Ill patients across the world all want a way to end what they are going through, but not all doctor’s want to help them achieve those goals. The right to die is a patient’s ability to choose their own time and means of death. A patient’s death can be caused through injections of lethal drugs or even by taking them off of their life support by the request of the patient. Some people support this law because they believe that a patient should have the right to choose whether or not they would want a “dignified death” or a death not caused by an illness. The people opposing this law take the side of the sanctity of life and upholding the integrity of the medical profession by “maintaining bans on physician-assisted suicide” (Right to Die).

However, there is immense criticism on the morality of the process, especially because the process denies a patient the right to natural death. The critics of the assisted suicide procedure argue that such a process devalues human life and tends to promote suicide as an alternative to personal suffering. By claiming that the procedure allows terminally ill patients to initiate dignity at death is flawed because the purpose of medical profession is to ensure a dignified life. According to the physicians’ code of ethics and the Hippocratic Oath, physicians are not allowed to do harm to their patients because their role is to allow a dignified health for members of the community. Consequently, legalization of Physician Assisted suicide that requires physicians to assist the patients to die is against their medical ethics. Quill, Cassel, & Meier (2010) provide that although the patients voluntarily ask the medical practitioners to assist in the process, the practitioners have a role to advise the patients against such a procedure. Besides, such a premise is bound to raise awareness of suicide as an alternative to suffering within the public domain, which may encourage such behavior among healthy members of the community that feel that they enjoy the freedom to make such a decision. On this basis, the negative moral implication of assisted suicide makes its legalization unworthy in the