Death with Dignity and the Law - Assignment Example

Death with DignityINTRODUCTIONRight to die is the term given to the situation where a person under a terminal illness is given the authority to end his life through physician assistance, in the case where he doesn’t want to continue living on his own consent. In other cases it can take the form of suicide too .These decisions are often taken in situations where recovery is highly impossible or where the patient want to end his/her own life because they can’t undergo the pain any longer in respective illness .

In physician-assisted suicide a doctor supplies a death-causing means after the family’s consent or where chances of recovery are not at all possible .On the other hand in voluntary euthanasia, the physician performs the death-causing act after the patient’s compliance (Manuel, 2002). SUBJECT MATTERA debate exists within bioethics, where it is argued that the right to die should be made legal universally or only in conditions where a patient is suffering from terminal illness .However in cases where a patient is showing the interest in ending his own life, in such conditions doctors and nurses should not be held accountable as long as it was against the patient’s consent.

Individuals should be allowed to make a decision to end their life as long as it is not affecting their situation or endangering anyone’ s else’s life .However this should be kept in mind that making this right legal will open a phase to a number of consequences where people might take advantage of such situations in order to seek revenge from the patient or their family members (Rickard, Clark, Singer & Baume, 1997).Supporters of legislation legalizing assisted suicide claim, that people have a right to end one’s life when they want to.

There are people who are suffering from diseases where they consider death as more peaceful .In such conditions .one should be given the right to do so through any medical treatment or any physician assisted act.On the other hand those who are against assisted suicide declare that we as human beings have a right to preserve life in all its forms and therefore allowing others to assist in suicide violates the fundamental duty that we have towards our fellow beings .A society such as this should not assisted to go on with such acts .

Matthew Donnelly loved life although unfortunately he suffered from skin cancer .As the days passed and the cancer continued to eat his body ,he begged the doctors to end his life as he had already lost his nose ,his left hand ,two fingers on the right hand and part of his jaw .Looking at his dreadful situation ,where his pleas went unanswered ,his brother Harold decided to bring an end to his misery by shooting him with a 3.0 caliber pistol .He was tried for murder. A REAL LIFE EXAMPLELooking at another example of Sue Rodriguez, a mother in her early thirties died slowly of Lou Gehrig's disease.

She lived with this knowledge for many years that her muscles one by one will slowly squander from her body finally till the moment where she will choke to death .She begged the court to allow her to choose a doctor in whose assistance she can die peacefully .However her pleas for this act were ignored until finally she was helped by a doctor who actually broke the law to let her die in peace (Seale, 2006). REFERENCESEmanuel EJ: Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide: a review of the empirical data from the United States.

Arch Intern Med 2002, 162(2):142-152. Kuhse H, Singer P, Baume P, Clark M, Rickard M: End-of-life decisions in Australian medical practice. Med J Aust 1997, 166(4):191-196. Seale C: Characteristics of end-of-life decisions: survey of UK medical practitioners. Palliat Med 2006, 20(7):653-659.