Doctor assisted suicide
" Modern medicine has advanced to a point where doctors are able to keep the sick and elderly alive much longer"(Issues and Controversies). Many older or terminally ill people are still afraid of dying in a hospital, and are afraid of suffering from ongoing, uncomfortable pain. As these trends coincide, opinion polls have found that a majority of Americans approve of actions like those of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a controversial retired pathologist who has made a mission of assisting terminally ill people to die. Mentally competent and terminally ill people should be able to seek and receive a doctor's help to die. What exactly is meant by mental competence? In legal terms it means a person is found sound of mind, lucid and not suffering from any mental impairment or disturbance(World news Digest). These terminally ill patients could choose between two major options, assisted suicide or euthanasia. The term assisted suicide and euthanasia are sometimes used interchangeably, but they differ. In assisted suicide, a doctor prescribes a lethal dose of medication, making the means of death available but not participating in it. In euthanasia, the doctor himself or herself administers a fatal dose to a patient
Also, rather than taking a life which opponents insist is morally wrong, the procedure if implemented may help patient gain comfort in worsen conditions. Patients must make three requests to die. A third argument is that legal assisted suicide may cause a dying person to feel that he or she is a financial burden to family members and may therefore "choose" suicide rather than continue to live sustained by expensive medical care. They may also simply be given peace of mind and freedom from anxiety over their worsening condition. A 15-day waiting period, beginning after the initial request, must elapse before the patient can obtain a prescription containing a large enough drug dose to kill himself or herself (Oregon laws 5). There would be laws governing the practice insuring that the terminally ill patients had less than six months to live before anyone was able to receive assistance in carrying out the procedure. Finally in contrast to what opponents claim, financial burden would not be the sole factor causing patients to choose assisted suicide. The idea would be workable in this country too. Despite opponents' claims that it is a violation of professional standards for a doctor to help someone to die, the highest ethical imperative of doctors should be to provide care in whatever way best serves patients' interests, in accord with each patient's wishes, not with a theoretical commitment to preserve life no matter what the cost in suffering New England Journal of Medicine. Laws permitting doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to a terminally ill patient if several conditions are met. David Orentlicher, an associate law professor at Indiana University School of Law in Indianapolis and a former director of the AMA's division of medical ethics says, that if people know they can request help to die, they may no longer fear "aggressive medical treatments that are painful and risky"(p 4), but that may extend their lives. In a survey of Oregon doctors published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1996, 60% said that they felt they should be able to help terminally ill patients to die in some circumstances; 7% of those admitted that they had helped patients to die. The right to assisted suicide might even help patients to live longer. They should also have a right to "die with dignity" to avoid a prolonged death in which they may be in terrible pain, heavily sedated or wholly dependent on family members and caregivers for help in performing basic bodily functions.
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