Assisted Suicide

Physician Assisted Suicide

Ethical issue

Ethics is concerned with how humans should live—that is, how they ought to manage their lives and relate to each other and the world around them. Ethical concerns have a certain normative priority in decision making, functioning as a standard against which other forms of human activity and decision making are to be measured—law, politics, economics, sport, and so forth.

Physician-assisted death may be perceived either as the ultimate victory of personal control and autonomy over the inherently unpredictable process of dying or as the ultimate failure of society to protect its most vulnerable members and the sanctity of life. Voluntary euthanasia is the term used for requesting to be killed or killing oneself to escape some inevitable ill fate. The killing is voluntary because either the person does it himself or requests that another do it for him. The ill fate that is usually at issue is intractable pain, a terminal illness (imminent death from an incurable disease), or an irreparable harm to one's dignity (Humphry, 2006).

For most people, the term euthanasia does not apply unless at least the first two of these conditions are met; killing another merely to preserve that person's dignity is usually considered murder, and to kill oneself under such circumstances is suicide. Currently under U.S. law, ending one's own life is only allowed through the refusal of treatment and generally only if death is imminent even if treatment were continued. There are two exceptions: The first is that the termination of treatment is sometimes allowed in cases where death is not imminent (e.g., when a patient is in a persistent vegetative state).

The central ethical argument for voluntary euthanasia — that respect for persons demands respect for their autonomous choices as long as those choices do not result in harm to others — is directly connected with this issue of competence.

The ethical or institutional of an individual to end his or her life, or voluntarily undergo euthanasia is their right to die. This right is understood to refer to the person's right to allowed being able to take his or her life in the case of being terminally ill, and may be provided assistance in committing suicide. It is often debated that who will be empowered to make such a decision. This belief reflects the idea that the person has the right over his own life, that his body and his own life are his own to do whatever he wants. This is often debated to keep in mind the possibility of irrational suicide, which is possible due to mental disorders, or achieved deliberately (Moreno, 2005).

An ethical principle that holds is an act that causes harm may be morally permissible if the harm is a side effect of promoting a legitimate purpose. In the context, of euthanasia, the principle of twofold effect would justify a doctor's giving high doses of painkilling drugs to ease the pain of a terminally ill patient (the legitimate purpose) even though the patient might die sooner, as ...