Physician Assisted Suicide

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A terminal illness is an illness that usually results in death of the patient that has the ailment. It is an incurable disease meaning that there is no way to rid the body of it definitely. Typically, a terminal illness is associated with cancer and heart disease. Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) is when a doctor assisted a patient into their death by prescribing them a lethal dose of medication. Terminally ill patients are more than likely going to pass as it is. PAS gives them a chance to control their death and gives them a chance to say goodbye to all of their family and friends before passing, possibly unexpectedly. It can cost up to $10,000 a day to keep someone alive in an intensive care unit. In some cases a person may require being …show more content…
Physician-Assisted Suicide is when the doctor simply prescribes the lethal doses of drugs. Euthanasia on the other hand, is when the doctor is the one that actually ends the patient’s life. There are two types of euthanasia, passive and active. In passive euthanasia is where the patient is denying the necessary food and/or water to live. Active euthanasia is when the physician administers the drugs that end up killing the patient. Euthanasia, in either form, can be voluntary, involuntary, or even non-voluntary. Voluntary is when a patient is giving the physician the okay to go ahead and let them pass or administer the drugs necessary to end their life. Involuntary is when a patient declines the drugs or requests to remain on life support and the doctor participates in euthanasia anyway. Non-voluntary euthanasia is when a patient neither accepts nor declines the process of euthanasia. The act of physician-assisted suicide should be legal, but the act of euthanasia should remain illegal. PAS is, in some context, a humane way of taking a patients out of their misery. Euthanasia is a sadistic way of killing a patient. In order for PAS to be legal, the patient must have lawyers present so that proof of the patient administering the drugs themselves can be confirmed. This is so that the doctors who have prescribed the drugs cannot be charged with any sort of murder or homicide
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