Imagine you are in a permanent state of vegetation or that you have been diagnosed with an incurable disease that will inevitably lead to a painful death. No one would ever want to be in either of these situations. But what about those who already are? Must they continue to live an unpleasant and futile life? A large number of people would rather end their life than be stuck in that kind of situation. Those people would be contemplating what many know as physician-assisted suicide, or PAS. According to the American Geriatrics Society, PAS is when " a physician provides either equipment or medication, or informs the patient of the most efficacious use of already available means, for the purpose of assisting the patient to end his or her own life,"(AGS). Some common forms of PAS include, but are not limited to, withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatments and administering lethal doses of medication to induce death. Unfortunately, some arguments concerning how ethical it is have caused people to overlook the benefits of the act, and view PAS in a more negative light.
             I have had a heightened curiosity about PAS ever since I watched a close friend of my family experience a slow agonizing death the last year of his life. He had to wait several months for a court date to determine whether or not his physician could practice PAS. He was taken away from us before the court date arrived.
             The question of ethics goes hand in hand with physician-assisted suicide. According to the American Medical Association (AMA) physician-assisted suicide is
             unethical on the grounds that actively ending a patient's life is "fundamentally incompatible with the physicians role as healer,"(PCRM). Instead of aiding the suicide, the AMA feels that physicians "must aggressively respond to the needs of the patients at end of life." However, the AMA also believes that if a competent patient or the famil...