Ethical Question

a often argued question in the medical field is whether or not physician assisted suicide should be allowed. there are many valid arguments for both sides of this question. "should physician assisted suicide be allowed?"

Pro - physician assisted suicide

1."The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of this right is as central to personal autonomy and bodily integrity as rights safeguarded by this Court's decisions relating to marriage, family relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the refusal or termination of life-saving medical treatment. In particular, this Court's recent decisions concerning the right to refuse medical treatment and the right to abortion instruct that a mentally competent, terminally ill person has a protected liberty interest in choosing to end intolerable suffering by bringing about his or her own death."
- ACLU Amicus Brief in Vacco v. Quill
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)
Dec. 10, 1996

2. "Living wills can be used to refuse extraordinary, life-prolonging care and are effective in providing clear and convincing evidence that may be necessary under state statutes to refuse care after one becomes terminally ill.

A recent Pennsylvania case shows the power a living will can have. In that case, a Bucks County man was not given a feeding tube, even though his wife requested he receive one, because his living will, executed seven years prior, clearly stated that he did 'not want tube feeding or any other artificial invasive form of nutrition'...

A living will provides clear and convincing evidence of one's wishes regarding end-of-life care."

- Joseph Pozzuolo, JD
Professor, Neuman College
Lisa Lassoff, JD
Associate, Reed Smith
Jamie Valentine, JD
Associate, Pozzuolo & Perkiss
"Why Living Wills/Advance Directives Are an Essential Part of Estate Planning," Journal of Financial Service Professionals Sep. 2005

why can a will be obeyed but when the person is actually living, willing and competent this is not the case?

3."At the Hemlock Society we get calls daily from desperate people who are looking for someone like Jack Kevorkian to end their lives which have lost all quality... Americans should enjoy a right guaranteed in the European Declaration of Human Rights -- the right not to be forced to suffer. It should be considered as much of a crime to make someone live who with justification does not wish to continue as it is to take life without consent."

- Faye Girsh, EdD
Senior Adviser, Final Exit Network,
"How Shall We Die," Free Inquiry
Winter 2001

Against Physician Assisted Suicide.

1. "The history of the law's treatment of assisted suicide in this country has been and continues to be one of the rejection of nearly all efforts to permit it. That being the case, our decisions lead us to conclude that the asserted 'right' to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause."

- Washington v. Glucksberg (63 KB)
US Supreme Court Majority Opinion
June 26, 1997

2. "Activists often claim that laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are government mandated suffering. But this claim would be similar to saying that laws against selling contaminated food are government mandated starvation.

Laws against euthanasia and assisted suicide are in place to prevent abuse and to protect people from unscrupulous doctors and others. They are not, and never have been, intended to make anyone suffer."

- Rita Marker, JD
Executive Director
Kathi Hamlon
Policy Analyst
International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
"Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide: Frequently Asked Questions," www.internationaltaskforce.org
Jan. 2010

3. "The prohibition against killing patients... stands as the first promise of self-restraint sworn to in the Hippocratic Oath, as medicine's primary taboo: 'I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect'... In forswearing the giving of poison when asked for it, the Hippocratic physician rejects the view that the patient's choice for death can make killing him right. For the physician, at least, human life in living bodies commands respect and reverence--by its very nature. As its respectability does not depend upon human agreement or patient consent, revocation of one's consent to live does not deprive one's living body of respectability. The deepest ethical principle restraining the physician's power is not the autonomy or freedom of the patient; neither is it his own compassion or good intention. Rather, it is the dignity and mysterious power of human life itself, and therefore, also what the Oath calls the purity and holiness of life and art to which he has sworn devotion."

- Leon Kass, MD, PhD
Addie Clark Harding Professor, Committee on Social Thought and the College, University of Chicago
"Neither for Love nor Money," Public Interest
Winter 1989

the basics of this argument are presented above. the main points focus on whether or not the constitution allows for euthanasia,the competence of the patient, and whether or not the hippocratic oath would allow euthanasia.

i believe that if the right criteria has been met and the patient is terminally ill that physician assisted suicide should be allowed.

whether or not the constitution allows for euthanasia should not be a main part of this argument. while the constitution sets out parameters for the way this country is governed, the constitution does not outline every persons morals. in our country there are many different peoples with many different morals and it is something the us has been reputably proud of. you cannot limit peoples morals or beliefs through governmental policies. specific cases need specific attention and guidelines and should not be generalized by the constitution.

the competence of the patient is a tricky situation. to fully address this issue there would have to be a organization like the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, the principal forensic psychiatric organization in the United States, to train and educate specialized psychiatrists to determine the cognitive state of patients. this organization would govern over euthanasia cases and they would be able to provide individual attention to each case.

the hippocratic oath is not set in stone. the oath has been changed several times to accommodate the changes in medical practice over the years. some of these changes have been to allow women to study medicine and allowing physicians to break the skin of patients. the oath states that physicians should do no harm. isnt keeping a patient alive in a state of intense pain and suffering doing harm to the patient? while killing the patient causes more harm in the form of ending the patients life early, hasnt the physician ended prolonged suffering at the wishes of the patient? removing a person from continuous suffering by death at their own wish should be considered a morally sound action.