Assisted Suicide Essay Research Paper Assisted SuicidePhysicianassisted — страница 2

  • Просмотров 276
  • Скачиваний 9
  • Размер файла 17
    Кб

Physician-assisted suicide is ethical. A legitimate, universally valid code of medical ethics no longer exists: What has traditionally passes for ethics among doctors is a vague body of unwritten rules of obscure origin that loosely prescribes professional etiquette among themselves and for their relationship with patients (Wekesser 49). The Hippocratic Oath is a model for the ethical, natural practice of medicine. Doctors need this to be sworn in as an official doctor, this sacred oath was occasionally mentioned in medical schools and rarely studied by the majority of doctors. Some never officially took the oath or even administered it. This alone makes suspect the faithful oath s importance or connection to modern medical practice. Human dignity ennobles free reign to the

ability of man to think things over, to decide, and to apply self-control, to become his own master . It is the sense of worth that comes with having the freedom and responsibility to make judgments about what is proper and improper (Wekesser 50). The people who want their suffering ended usually enjoy life, love living, and their feeling for life is a strong as anyone s, but the pain is too great to endure. Also, for many people, just knowing how they are going to be killed is in itself great comfort and often extends lives. Once a person knows how to make his or her exit and has the means, he or she will often renegotiate the conditions of dying (Wekesser 20). Thousands of dying patients in America would be comforted to know that, if and when their suffering becomes

intolerable, a human alternative is available to them. Many believe that it is inevitable, that such an arrangement will come. There are simply too many patients who do not wish to languish in such hopeless situations and will take the measures to preclude such pointless suffering, not to mention the many physicians who believe that the current level of suffering is barbaric (Wekesser 20). Helping another die in carefully considering circumstances is part of god medicine and also demonstrates a caring society that offers euthanasia to hopelessly sick people. The one who is suffering should have the right to say when the pain has become an unendurable hardship but if he is unable to decide, then closest friend or family member should decide. Dying dogs, cats and other animals are

put to sleep out of compassion, human beings should be shown the same consideration. It seems that humans should be put to sleep just as ill dogs and cats, but that is not the way society is. Humans should be treated better than animals but if a person wants their life terminated then they should have that choice. The proposition is that people are being treated the same way as animals. The euthanasia standard assumes an equivalency between the moral value of the life of an animal and that of a human being. Animals such as dogs are abandoned or unwanted, and they are killed more often for that instead of being sick or injured. An example is that, when a horse has a broken leg, it is legal to be shot, but to say that a similarly injured person could be killed to put him or her out

of misery would never be accepted. Animals are killed for food, sport, purposes of population control, or, at times out of compassion. Most pet lovers who have put a loved sick or injured pet to sleep have done so because they did not want their beloved friend to suffer. Many have also chosen euthanasia for their animal because they did not want to spend the time, effort and money to provide their ill pet with curative treatment, pain control, and or palliation that would materially reduce their suffering without killing them (Smith 209). For humans though, this is not the case; people should do all they can to keep someone alive but when the pain is unbearable, death is sometimes the best way out. There is not difference between choice in abortion and choice in euthanasia. By

abortion being a choice, euthanasia gains the same public acceptance that they perceive currently exists for the right of a woman to terminate her pregnancy. Choice is choice, accepting a moral equivalency between abortion and being personally killed by a doctor. In both circumstances, there is a life being taken. Assisted suicide has mostly the same provisions; it should also be a choice. This issue and the man who has pioneered and personalized it, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, is really all about freedom. This is not all about the right to die, since death comes to everyone. It is about denying that the state has any right to compel innocent, competent adults to needlessly suffer (Wekesser 91). The state of free society prevents a physician from using his or her training and expertise