Physician Assisted Suicide Analysis

Issue Analysis: Death with Dignity Law Physician-assisted suicide is among the most debated issue of our time. This controversy is about the law that allows terminally ill patients to end their lives with lethal drugs prescribed by a doctor. Canada should allow euthanasia to be legalized because palliative care cannot cure all suffering, protections are put in place to minimize the risk of abuse, and individuals have the right to end their own life. Therefore, the Death with Dignity Law is just. Physician assisted suicide is not about physicians becoming killers; it is about patients whose suffering cannot be relieved and not turning away when they ask for help. If other physicians consider it merciful to help such patients by merely writing …show more content…
By establishing appropriate criteria that would have to be met before a patient could receive assistance, the risk becomes limited. "Oregon was the first U.S. state to make it legal for a doctor to prescribe a life-ending drug to a terminally ill patient of sound mind who makes the request" (Snyder). The strict protocol put in place to protect patients includes: "the patient must have an incurable condition causing severe and unrelenting suffering, the patient must understand his or her condition and prognosis which must be verified by an independent second opinion, all reasonable palliative measures must have been presented and considered to the patient, the patient must clearly and repeatedly request assistance in dying, a psychiatric physician must get to know the patient well enough to understand the reasoning for the request, no physician should be expected to violate his or her own basic value, and all the foregoing must be clearly documented" (Biggs). By removing the criminalization against physician assistance, it is likely to reduce the incentive for suicide. These reasonable criteria are put in place to substantially reduce the risk of abuse by protecting the …show more content…
"Refusal of treatment is not a privilege of terminally ill patients but rather a right that all patients have and is accordingly respected in the courts" (Somerville). The general attitude about taking a life is that it causes the loss of one's capacity to plan and choose a future by depriving one of life's joy. One reason why many physicians object to the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment is that they see it as an active action of evil that might not be in agreement with their medical integrity or religious beliefs. Nevertheless, this sort of decision should be sacred to a physician, regardless of how it may interfere with the Hippocratic Oath. "Individuals use their stories to speak out for the right of terminally ill people to end their lives on their own terms” <www.dyingwithdignity.ca> There are instances when taking a life, especially one's own, is a right accepted even by the strongest

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