Physician-Assisted Suicide

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Physician-aided suicide is the process of a physician providing the information or means or both for committing suicide to a patient ranging from counselling, drug prescriptions, lethal dosages and all the information one would need to know to take their own life. Medical codes have long prohibited the involvement of physicians in the act of assisting a patient in committing suicide but in recent years, the support for the liberalization of this ban has grown. I believe that physician-assisted suicide should be legalized to help the dying accept their fate on their own terms, to prevent unnecessary suffering and to help the affected loved ones find closure. Firstly, physician-aided suicide can be used by a dying patient as a way to …show more content…
Undergoing treatment to treat a terminal disease can bring about many negative side effects. For example, according to the UK National Health Service website, although different people react differently to chemotherapy, some of the common side effects of chemotherapy include fatigue, nausea and vomiting, hair loss, increased risk of infection, mucositis, loss of appetite and in some bad cases breathing difficulties and terrible chest pains are possible too (Side Effects of Chemotherapy). In cases where the terminal disease has reached an incurable stage, chemotherapy will not be able to save them and will only prolong their life with the expense of it being that the rest of the patient’s days would be spent in agonizing pain. For patients like these, a physician-aided suicide might be a viable option for someone who has no more options to turn to. This way the patient will be able to control his or her own death. They won’t feel as if the disease has full control over their life and they have the ability to end it whenever they choose to do so. In an interview with the BBC in September of 2013, when Stephen Hawking was asked about this topic, he responded saying “We do not let animals suffer, so why humans?” (Stephen Hawking speaks out about assisted …show more content…
While it might seem to be the contrary, in the majority of the cases involving a patient participating in a physician-aided suicide, their loved ones are actually left in a happier state compared to the loved ones of patients that died of their diseases. This is because when a patient takes part in a physician-aided suicide, they have full control of when they want to take their life. Thus, before taking their lethal prescription, they can take the time to console their family members and spend as much time as they want with their loved ones before finally taking their life in a peaceful way. On the other hand, patients that do not partake in physician assisted suicide have no clue as to when their death will come. They can’t have the conversation they want to have with their loved ones before they come to pass because their loved ones would not accept that death was imminent and they will still be hoping for a recovery of sorts. On top of that, death caused by illnesses can be very painful and full of struggles thus leading your loved ones to be more traumatized. I once had a friend named Joshua who suffered from ALS. When the disease effected his heart, I saw him struggling on his bed, gasping for air as his heart gave out. I was traumatized by the amount of pain he was going through. I feel like he should have been given the choice of ending it there without
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