Question

Investigate pros and cons about physician-assisted suicide/euthanasia. Which argument or arguments do you find most compelling? Summarize each and explain your thinking. Note: The pertinent recommended website in this week’s reading and preparation is a good place to start.

Answer 1

There are many arguments for and againist physician assisted suicide. In many states it is legalized while in many not. Everybody has their own arguments. Few of them are :

Pros

• Legal right to decide about his life and right of a peaceful death.
• Physician’s duty
• Relieves pain and suffering of terminally ill and their care givers
• Measures can be taken by careful consideration of the conditions in which euthanasia is permissible with due consideration to protect rights of significant others and amid possibilities of misuse.

Cons

• The Declaration of Independence says that we should have the right to pursue life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but independence does not mean we have the right to pursue death, no.”
• Increased pressure on people in similar conditions to choose end of life or to do right thing, while they are not willing for it
• It is against Hippocrates’s oath. Euthanasia is fundamentally incompatible with the physician’s role as healer. As well as ambivalence and discomfort by physicians involved in euthanasia is also a matter of concern for their mental health. Physicians cannot be the instruments of suicide.
• Misuse of the provision is a real possibility. There may be extension of euthanasia to infants, those with mental illnesses or disabilities, and the elderly…

I am in favor of physician assisted suicide or euthanasia.

In my opinion the right to die should be a matter of personal choice.

As we live in a democratic world, having liberty and autonomy in decision making within limits of not harming others. Everybody is free to make decisions on the basis of their own personal preferences.

When an individual is having right to decide from the available choices based on his / her wishes, from very simple things what to eat or wear to whom to marry, which profession, where to work and many more I feel an individual should also have right to decide about end of life or right of a dignified death.

It is up to him to live as long as he wants and there should be laws to help him if

• he is struggling with some health conditions with intolerable symptoms and healing is no longer possible
• he feels he is a burden on family or society
• does not wishes to live unnecessarily when he is no longer productive.

In this case he should have right to decide about her own life and if he decides to end, it should be respected.

The role of physicians also need to be viewed in broader prospective, and focus should shift from viewing them as “healers” to assisting those who are assisting in a peaceful death for those patients who are terminally ill and are willing for end of their life, as an independent, autonomous decision, without any coercion.

Just imagine how much courage a physician needs to address suffering of a terminally ill patient, and how to respond it daily until patients dies of a natural death for which he was wishing and requesting.

“It must be a choice for both patient and physician.”

The role of physician is to cure people, or to help them. Sometimes people need help dying. And to prolong a death in some cases is not helpful, it can be counterproductive. One cannot imagine the chronic, agonizing and unrelievable pain of terminally ill cancer patient and his family members.

The emotional reactions of the care takers seeing their loved ones in that situation round the clock. If there is no euthanasia, then they have to continue to bear this pain and suffering and how we can take pride in such circumstances arguing that deliberate shortening of ones life is sinful.

Assisting death should not be understood as that one is denied best of palliative health care possible but rather integrates compassionate care and respect for the patient’s autonomy and ultimately makes death with dignity a real option.

Considering above facts I strongly vote for provision of euthanesia.