Assisted Suicide - Research Paper Example

?Running Head: Assisted Suicide and Number: of Paper: Assisted Suicide Submitted: Introduction Assisted suicide should be adopted as the best way of relieving patients of their suffering. It is indisputable that doctors try their best to treat patients by diagnosing and prescribing drugs but this does not always relieve the pain and suffering the patients, especially those with terminal illnesses such as cancer and diabetes among others, go through (Morrison, 2008). When one is suffering from a terminal illness, he knows that death is an eventuality and therefore, it becomes a question of when and not whether he will die. Everyone has the right to die with dignity and it is for this purpose that they should be allowed to choose when and how to die. Assisted suicide therefore becomes a viable option whereby the patient requests another person, for example a physician, to assist him in ending his life. The physician provides the patient with the means to commit suicide but the act itself is upon the patient to carry out. This is as opposed to euthanasia whereby the doctor is directly involved in the termination of a patient’s life (Morrison, 2008). However, there are those on the opposing side, who feel that legalizing assisted suicide will cause more harm than good. This paper is a critical evaluation of assisted suicide and why it should be advocated for. Assisted Suicide Assisted suicide is a highly controversial issue in the contemporary society. Suicide has always been viewed in bad light, especially by some religious organizations such as the Catholic Church due to the fact that Christianity teaches that God is the overall creator and as such, he is the only one who can take away life. In this context, it is believed that committing suicide denies one the right to go to heaven as it is an unforgivable sin (Foley, 2002). However, the concept of assisted suicide is not unique to the contemporary society. In ancient Greece, 1st century B.C, the practice was common and the government supported it by way of supplying lethal drugs to persons wishing to commit suicide. This was perceived as a way of preserving a person’s honor but with the advent of Christianity, the perception towards suicide changed dramatically (Weir, 2001). Technological advancements in the field of medicine have had a positive effect on public health. Due to these, patients suffering from terminal illnesses such as cancer can now live longer as medical procedures such as chemotherapy are now available. Life support machines are available in hospitals worldwide and this has helped a lot in prolonging the lives of patients suffering from chronic illnesses such as heart and kidney failure. A person suffering from diabetes can also live longer due to the availability of synthetic insulin, which must be injected into the patient at regular intervals for the remainder of his life. However, prolonging these people’s lives does not eliminate the psychological trauma and pain that they go through. Instead, it only helps to prolong the dying process, which could be painful and unbearable to the patient (Weir, 2001). Due to this, they should be allowed to determine their destiny through assisted suicide. By so doing, they would be able to manage their uncertainties by selecting a painless mode to terminate their lives. For example, a patient may instruct his doctor to unplug the life support machine so as to let him die. In addition, it would allow them to prepare their families so that it does not become difficult for them to take the news. In this context, the family would have time to bid farewell to their loved one as opposed to when they have to wait for nature to take its course. Terminal illnesses are highly expensive to manage. A person may be forced to sell his property and assets in order to afford paying for his or her medical bills. This means that such patients could utilize all their lifetime savings for this purpose and to a great extent, this would amount to selfishness. Families of the patient would have to continue with their lives; children would continue to demand school fees, food would be needed to maintain their health among other basic necessities and all this should not be denied in order to prolong a person’s life especially if he or she is willing to die. All this agony can be reduced by allowing assisted suicide, failure to which such families would end up incurring heavy debts, which could leave them out in the streets whereby they would become an extra burden to the government and society in general (Caplan, 2001). Every person has the unalienable right to pursue happiness but if they feel that their life is unworthy, then, they should be allowed to choose to end it (Caplan, 2001). People continue to commit suicide using primitive means such as drowning themselves intentionally, hanging, ingesting poison among others, which subject them to unnecessary pain and shame especially if it fails to work. Legalizing assisted suicide would ensure that these people are taken through guiding and counseling in order to give them an opportunity to reflect on their lives and make an informed decision after which they would be allowed to choose the best method to hasten their death. It is usually painful to have a patient at home, who cannot take care of his or her own day to day activities such as bathing, feeding, taking himself to the toilet among others. Such people may feel that they have become a burden to their care givers especially if they have conditions such as old age, which cannot be reversed through any scientific means. If they want to die, no person or institution should prevent them from pursuing their happiness, which would be to rest in peace. However, such cases should never be determined by people other than the patient in order to avoid the probability of assisted suicide turning into a method of eliminating weak persons in the society. The Nazi government in Germany, during Hitler’s rule, utilized involuntary Euthanasia as a way of eliminating unproductive persons such as those with disabilities, the aged among others and this cannot be acceptable in a democratic society (Foley, 2002). The debate surrounding assisted suicide is more or less similar to other debates such as legalization of prostitution and abortion, which are highly based on morality and sanctity of life. However, due to the fact that most of the countries around the world have failed to legalize these activities, the public has continued to exercise them in the backstreets under the watchful eye of the authorities. This has contributed to an increase in deaths arising from these illegal activities as the government does not have sufficient control over those who perform them. Similarly, continuing to illegalize assisted suicide will only contribute to cases of unwarranted deaths as a result of lack of proper legislations to define and dictate who should be assisted to commit suicide. In the US, there are only 3 states i.e. Oregon, Washington and Montana, which have legalized assisted suicide (Emmanuel, 2009). However, physicians such as Jack Kevorkian continued to assist people to commit suicide especially in his state of Michigan, where this practice is illegal under the common law. Despite his involvement and arrest, Kevorkian, who is credited as having assisted more than 130 patients to commit suicide, was released on parole in 2007 after serving 8 years out of the probable maximum 25 years he could have served for committing second degree murder (Emmanuel, 2009). This means that others could also be doing it in secret thereby implying that the law is not as prohibitive as opponents may want to believe. Furthermore, there is no logic in having a law abolishing assisted suicide in the US whereas some states in the same country have legalized it. It may be illegal in Michigan but people on a suicide mission can travel to Oregon and have the same done without having any legal implications. For example, the practice is illegal in Britain but this did not prevent Craig Ewert to travel to Zurich in Switzerland to have his life terminated. Ewert had been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease, which is said to kill within a period of 3 years after the first symptoms have begun to show. The controversy surrounding Ewert’s suicide, especially due its publicity, prompted the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to issue a remark in which he advised the media to be sensitive while airing the live coverage of the suicide. This stirred emotions especially among dying with dignity activists, who thought that it was necessary and ripe for the parliament to initiate public discussions on the issue in order to review the merits and demerits of legalizing assisted suicide in the country. Ewert’s family was okay with his decision and therefore, this should be taken as an example of numerous people, who are living in pain and anguish just because their governments have continued to deprive them of their liberty to hasten their lives and they cannot afford to travel to other jurisdictions where assisted suicide is legal (Morrison, 2008). On the other hand, legalizing assisted suicide would be a way of promoting a serious injustice in the society. Every person has an unalienable right to life, which is protected by local and international laws, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Emmanuel, 2009). No person therefore has the right to assist or advise another to take his own life irrespective of the prevailing circumstances. Palliative care is available worldwide and as such, there is no justification for patients to feel the need of hastening their own deaths. Palliative care, unlike curative care, concentrates on making the patients comfortable by reducing their suffering and pain without prolonging or shortening their lives. Legalizing assisted suicide will create a loophole for involuntary euthanasia, whereby other people will take it upon themselves to determine the worthiness of life or lack of it in those who are under their care. This has a potential of promoting widespread murder and homicide, which a just society should work hard to eliminate. The case of Jack Kevorkian is a testimony on the amount of damage that legalizing assisted suicide can cause. It is believed that some of Kevorkian clients did not have any justifiable reasons to commit suicide but he assisted them anyway. Though the physician emphasized on the need to evaluate clients’ psychological needs before executing their death wishes, he rarely performed any psychological tests to his patients, which is important in determining whether there could be an alternative way of solving the patients’ suffering (Morrison, 2008). However, with proper guidelines and legislation in place, it would be easier for the government to monitor and regulate physician assisted suicide. The US, for example, is a country, which is founded on the principles of democracy and protection of basic human rights and therefore, there is no way the government could allow the killing of innocent persons. Suicide remains unlawful in almost all law jurisdictions and when it fails, the culprit is made to face consequences in accordance with the law. It is true to say that people who commit suicide do so due to the feeling that their life is unworthy. In this context, there is no big difference between motives in normal suicide and assisted suicide and therefore, the law should be consistent while dealing with this issue. The slippery slope argument makes sense in that if assisted suicide is legalized, we will definitely find more people requesting for assistance to commit suicide even though they may not qualify to do so. Proponents of assisted suicide argue that only those suffering from terminal illnesses would be qualified. However, this would encourage more population especially, those living desperately, to be accorded the right to hasten their death (Emmanuel, 2009). Every person has a different opinion on what a worthwhile life entails. Legalizing assisted suicide would mean that the law would have to accommodate self determination as a basis to grant wishes to commit suicide. This is more so because it is highly difficult to define unbearable suffering or pain in a conventional manner as the ability to withstand the two varies according to individuals. For example, a person suffering from cancer in its advanced stages may lack the need to live as this would only subject him to more suffering. Similarly, a person who is suffering from HIV/AIDs may find it unworthy to wait until it becomes advanced to the extent of him or her being subjected to ridicule and prejudice by the highly subjective society we are living in. Both patients have a viable reason to want to commit suicide in order to die with dignity. However, the patient suffering from HIV/AIDs is not terminally ill as he has a chance of living a long healthy and productive life through palliative care. Similarly, a person who has just had an accident and lost some of his limbs or has become paralyzed may have a self determined reason to want to commit suicide owing to the fact that he would have to spend the rest of his life depending on other people to care for him. However, through guidance and counseling, such a person may discover other avenues to make his life more comfortable and worthwhile. Legalizing assisted suicide will offer these people an easy exit, which would eventually develop into a catastrophe (Caplan, 2001). Compassion and sympathy are two important aspects of healthcare administration (Morrison, 2008). These motivate physicians and the society in general to treat patients as human beings irrespective of the time remaining before they die. The fact that proponents of assisted suicide expect the patients to make reasonable decisions as whether to commit suicide implies that these patients are not affected at the intellectual level and hence, they are people who can contribute to economic growth in a country or state. Lack of compassion and sympathy therefore means that doctors and physicians will tend to lack the passion needed to assist dying patients with quality care on the basis that the law supports assisted suicide. Furthermore, compassion does not entail helping others to take their own lives irrespective of the circumstances at hand and therefore, assisted suicide should remain illegal in order to ensure that healthcare providers maintain their integrity by focusing on the wellbeing of the patients as their primary objective. Furthermore, the Hippocratic Oath forbids doctors and nurses from assisting or even proposing death as a solution to a patient’s illness (Morrison, 2008). Conclusion Assisted suicide is a medical practice, through which a patient seeks the help of a care giver to hasten his death. It is a controversial issue in the contemporary society, which has continued to attract criticism and support in equal measure. Those in support claim that it is the best way to reduce pain and suffering in patients suffering from terminal illnesses. In this context, it has been observed that it is the right of every person to pursue happiness but where there is no life, for example in the case of a cancer patient with only six months to live, assisted suicide becomes an important solution. In rebuttal, opponents argue that life ends at death and since such a patient is expected to make a correct decision, then, it means he is alive and intellectually capable. The major issue as regards to this debate is the moral question. God is the ultimate giver and taker of life and man has acknowledged this by legislating laws that protect the right to life. Assisted suicide, therefore, is immoral and those who facilitate it should be punished. However, it is important to mention that just as prostitution and abortion have continued to flourish in the presence of prohibitive laws around the world, assisted suicide will continue to exist even where it is abolished. Furthermore, some states such as Oregon and Washington permit assisted suicide. This makes it difficult to prevent people from travelling to these places to have their death wishes honored. In addition, criminalizing the practice will only yield to people who do not qualify for assisted suicide being admitted by rogue physicians operating illegally. Therefore, the society must embrace assisted suicide as an evolution in the field of medicine and legalize it so as to make it easy for the authorities to create guidelines to facilitate monitoring of the practice so as to be able to protect innocent civilians especially the poor, minorities and those who cannot afford healthcare insurance. References Caplan, A. (2001). Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground. Indiana University Press Emmanuel, M. (2009). Regulating How We Die: The Ethical, Medical, and Legal Issues Surrounding Physician-Assisted Suicide. Harvard University Press Foley, K. (2002). The Case against Assisted Suicide: For the Right to End-of-Life Care. The Johns Hopkins University Press Morrison, E. (2008). Health Care Ethics: Critical Issues for the 21st Century. Jones & Bartlett Publishers Weir, R. (2001). Physician-Assisted Suicide. Indiana University Press Read More