Assisted Suicide - Term Paper Example

?Assisted Suicide Assisted Suicide Introduction Death that is slow and extremely painful in nature is a misery that almost everyone experiences and every one wishes that no one should experience this kind of death. Those who favor assisted suicide claim that health care practitioners force painful death on those patients who do not wish to experience it. The question that supports the very foundation of assisted suicide is that how professionals of health care should should react if their patients are suffering from a disease that cannot be cured and if they want to take the easy route of assisted suicide? This question is of great value to the society as well as health care practitioners. An answer to this problem can be obtained through arguments that are in favor and not in favor of assisted suicide. According to Webster, assisted suicide falls under the umbrella of euthanasia (McDougall, 2008, p.1). The term euthanasia is referred to as good death, this term is mostly used when health care practitioners ends a patient life in order to help him avoid his unbearable sufferings. Euthanasia is divided into two kinds, active and passive euthanasia. Active euthanasia refers to activities conducted to put an end to a patient’s life; it is even recognized mercy killing. Majority of the jurisdictions around the world has pronounced mercy killing as illegal and has even referred to it as murder. Passive euthanasia refers to an act of allowing a patient to die even when there are available procedures to delay the death. Examples of passive euthanasia include instances when patients deny treatments that can delay the death of a patient, this kind of euthanasia falls under the category of natural death. Body Suicide is term used to refer to an individual’s act of taking his/her own life, assisted suicide is a term used to refer to the help that an individual has while he takes his/her own life. In case of assisted suicide, the healthcare practitioner or the person providing care to the patient provides a method to the patient to take his/her own life and the patient himself, willfully adopts the provided method to put an end to his lie and suffering. Assisted suicide can either fall in the category of active or passive euthanasia, whether an act of assisted suicide is active or passive euthanasia depends on the meaning attach to the assistance provided to the patient. Examples: a drug used to take life is prescribed by a doctor to his/her patient while the doctor knows that the patient wishes to put an end to his life, a nurse supplying a medicine to the patient and the drug is used can put an end to the patient’s life and a health care practitioner helping the patient in every step of taking his/her own life, steps include: placement of the drug in the patients mouth, and assisting him in swallowing the drug. Pro Assisted Suicide There are various reasons due to which patients opt for assisted suicide rather than bearing the pain before natural death. One of the reasons is the lack of proper care and inhumane activities conducted by the caregivers in health care centers. This means that individuals are not being properly cared for in healthcare centers due to which a patient’s pain increases and they demand for death. Factors that have been proposed that make an individual wish for assisted suicide are threat of being isolated, pain not being cured, depression, threat of loss, feeling of helplessness and concerns regarding family. Another reason that makes individuals wish for assisted suicide is that patients know that they are ultimately going to die even if they use technology and treatment to delay, thus they opt to die rather than being unable to control their death. Due to these disturbing reasons, patients lose hope and accept death as a better alternative. According to the judicial system of US, a patient or an individual (patient) has a right to decide whether they want to live or die, patients in America obtained the right to accept death and refuse any treatment that can extend the ultimate outcome of death after the Quinlan case of 1976 and Cruzan case of 1990 (Terman, 2007). The Patient Self Determination act of 1991 made it obligatory for hospitals to provide information about their right decline any treatment, stop treatments that are being conducted, decline treatments that may be conducted in future even if these rejection lead to death of the patient. Patients’ right of self determination makes the concept of mercy killing logical (Devettere, 1995). Although science has become quite advance and treatments for disease that were incurable in the past have been figured out. Still if there is no cure for a particular disease, patients suffer heavy level of pain and suffer until they die. These patients are not provided with treatments to relax their suffering as treatments are not available or treatments have less effect. A patient suffering from acute pain is not the only one to suffer, others who suffer with him includes the patient’s family, friends, and the caregivers. Physicians normally leave these patients in pain because of the threat of being legally charged for prescribing pain relief medicines. Caregivers are very heavily effected as they have to experience and observe the fight that a patient has to put up while dealing with such diseases, caregivers even have to experience the emotional trauma suffered by the patient’s family members. Due to such circumstances, caregivers even experience emotional trauma and this negatively impacts their decision making during practice. This may make a caregiver think that the best possible solution to the pain of the patient and their families is assisted suicide although this might not be in compliance with their professional ethics. Those who support assisted suicide believe that denying assisted suicide is against the ethics principle of nonmaleficence, this means that although a means of assisted suicide is available and the patient has requested for it; still the caregiver is not doing as requested and allowing the patient to live in pain. Against Assisted Suicide Various reasons have been provided for standing against the principle of assisted suicide by those who do not support it. Reasons include: increase in unnecessary use of assisted suicide, patients will choose to live over assisted suicide if better treatment existed; assisted suicide is against the moral and ethical reasoning of the profession of health care (Shakespeare, 2006). Patients that are not very terminally ill or are no suffering from disease that cannot be cured may request for assistance of the physician in death. If assisted suicide is made legal, physicians might start conducting activities that fall under the category of active euthanasia that is non-voluntary and involuntary in nature. Non-voluntary active euthanasia is a term assigned to the physician’s activity of mercy killing without the consent of the patient when the patient is not competent enough to tolerate the pain. Voluntary active euthanasia is a term assigned to the physician’s activity of mercy killing without the consent of the patient even when the patient is competent enough to tolerate the pain. The increase in count of requests for assisted suicide is recognized as the slippery slope, this is because patients who might not be fighting against intolerable diseases will start requesting for physicians assistance in death if they are allowed to decide the matter of life and death legally. If only those who are suffering from diseases that are intolerable are allowed to choose the option of mercy killing, a conflict may arise regarding the limitation of the right to opt for assisted suicide for only those patients that are near to death. The conflict that may occur is that the liberty of opting for assisted death should not be limited to people who are suffering from acute pain, the option should even be available to those who might not be near to death but may be suffering from prolonged period of pain until they die. The decision of whether to opt for mercy killing may be dominated by factors such as financial situation and caregiver’s convenience. While legalizing assisted suicide, policy makers need to take under consideration the rule of durable power of attorney, according to this principle, if an individual is unable to make decisions on his own, the decision is to be made by attorney (Westrick, 2009). The attorney of the patient might opt for mercy killing for the patient even when the patient does not want to accept the option. Insurance companies experience heavy amount of expenditure while their client is in the last stages of his life, the insurance company might persuade the client to opt for assisted death in order to save money. In case of assisted death, a conflict between the medical profession’s emphasis on cure and caring might occur. In case of disease that cannot be cured, assisted death can be regarded as a cure but this kind of cure might be against the principle of care in the profession of healthcare. Health care practitioners, especially nurses, make decisions on moral grounds such as autonomy, doing good and avoidance of harm, but the most important principle that a nurse has to follow is to respect their patients. Although patients have a right to chose death and life but nurses are restricted from assisting patients in case of suicide. The reason due to which patients prefer assisted suicide is to gain relaxation from pain, though nurses are advised to use alternative methods to solve the medical issue. Thus, nurses can adopt treatments which can help in decreasing the pain a patient is suffering due to incurable diseases. A treatment can turn out to have a positive or a negative impact, a treatment is sought to be accepted if the reason behind providing that treatment is to help the patient relive pain even if the treatment leads to speeding up of the death of the patient. Therefore, if the reason behind using a treatment is to cure, then the treatment should be used, where as if the reason is to provide death, it should not be used. In this case, nurses and care providers may no longer be held legally as various jurisdictions have created laws that support assisted suicide. Still caregivers and nurses do not see assisted suicide as an ethically or morally acceptable solution because they are sensitive towards their patients and they feel for all the hardships that their patients go through while they are dealing with incurable and extremely painful diseases. Another problem of legalizing death as a cure is that this might be an obstacle in the research and development of options that can help decrease pain and save people, this is because if there will be no pain, then there will be no need to conduct research on how to deplete pain and cure diseases. Conclusion The question of whether it is ethical for physicians and professionals of the healthcare to provide assistance in suicide have raised concerns over the years. There has always been a conflict between the patient’s power to decide about his life and the ethical principles that physicians and caregivers have to comply with. Assisted suicide is not a solution; it is rather a cause that can lead to problems that may cause heavy loss of human life. Thus, the caregivers have to locate ways of treating patients in order o relieve their pain while they are suffering from incurable diseases. Even if patients die during the process of treating incurable diseases, the act will still be considered ethical as the act was conducted in good faith. If assisted suicide is made legal, then those patients who might be dealing with diseases that may not cause death but may cause immense pain will start giving up their lives. To stop the slippery slope of the disasters that are caused by assisted suicide, legalization and consideration of assisted suicide should come to an end. Rather, methods and treatments to increase the quality of human life and to respect life should be identified. References Devettere, R. J. (1995). Practical decision making in health care ethics: Cases and concepts. Washington, D.C: Georgetown University Press. McDougall, J. F., Gorman, M., & Roberts, C. S. (2008). Euthanasia: A reference handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. Terman, S. A., Miller, R. B., and Evans, M. S. (2007). The best way to say goodbye: a legal peaceful choice at the end of life, first edition. Life Transitions Publications. Shakespeare, T. (2006). Disability rights and wrongs. London: Routledge. Westrick, S. J., & Dempski, K. (2009). Essentials of nursing law and ethics. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Read More