Assisted Suicide Essay Research Paper Assisted SuicidePhysicianassisted — страница 3

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to evaluate each patient and where medically appropriate ease the patient free because his or her life has turned to unbearable pain and agony. If a person is not able to contribute to society and is not in unbearable pain, they have the right to live. Assisted suicide affects people who can not bear to live in the condition that they are in. It is not a crime in America to watch somebody kill himself and do nothing to stop it, or killing enemy soldiers in war. These facts state that killing a person is not always and necessarily regarded as wrong, it just depends on the circumstances. Therefore, a person can give the dying patient the absolutely essential gift of being present at the deathbed, because nobody should have to die alone, and the presence of a caring friend reduces

the chance of the self deliverance being botched (Clement 16). There is much to be done in the realm of civil liberties. When a method of self-deliverance is available to the hopelessly ill who wish it, the method is guaranteed to be painless and sure. When one has the assurance that privacy will be strictly respected, and when one has been guaranteed that friends and family whose presence and help are desired will not be implicated as criminals. A measure of independence and control is gained in lives. Assisted suicide is ethical and should be legalized, because proponents emphasize circumstances in which a condition has become overwhelmingly burdensome for a patient. Pain management for the patient is inadequate, and only a physician seems capable of bringing relief. Society

should acknowledge the rights of patients and to respect the decisions of those who elect euthanasia (Encarta 3). The role of the physician is to do what is best for the patient, and in some extreme situations this may include hastening death upon the voluntary request of dying. When desirable life has been thoroughly exhausted and every effort has been made to prevent the inevitable, assisted suicide should be made legally possible for the merciful, to show mercy to the dying who request intervention to end their suffering. Doctors may protest that they are committing to preserve and enhance life, not to end it deliberately. If the role of the physician is defined solely in terms if healing, then of course, this excludes assisting someone to die (Smith 45). This is the wrong way

to go about defining the scope and limits of the doctor s proper function. In some extreme circumstances, the best service a physician can render may be to help a person hasten death in order to relieve intolerable, unnecessary suffering that makes life unbearable, as judged by the patient. This would be an enlargement of the physician s role, not a contradiction of it.