PHYSICIAN ASSISTED SUICIDE

Physician Assisted Suicide

Abstract

Without doubt, modern death has become formidable. Physicians now have technologies and knowledge needed to prevent natural death almost indefinitely. Too often, terminally ill patients suffer needless pain and stay alive without real hope, as families have a terrible death clock. Arguments in favor of euthanasia are powerful - by appealing to our capacity for compassion and commitment to support individual choice and self-determination. But the case against euthanasia is also powerful for it tells us about the fundamental reverence for life and the risk of throwing down a slippery slope to decreased respect for life. With the legislation in the near future, we are forced to choose which values are most important and give our vote. The objective of this paper is to understand the basic concept of Euthanasia and the Assisted suicide and the Utilitarian view regarding it.

Table of Contents

Introduction4

Euthanasia4

Is it correct to call the euthanasia a "sweet or painless death?"4

The “Right to Die”5

Euthanasia and the Law6

Dr. Death6

Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the Utilitarian:7

Utilitarian Viewpoint8

Anti Assisted Killing9

Examples from the past10

Case study of Dax Cowart11

Case study of Terri Schiavo12

Conclusion12

References14

Physician Assisted Suicide and Utilitarian Viewpoint

Introduction

The Hippocratic Oath, taken by most Western physicians for over two millennia, states, “Neither will I administer a venom to any individual when inquired to manage so, neither will I propose such a course” (Kamisar 2000). Nonetheless, some medical historians accept as factual that numerous Greeks in Hippocrates' day (c. 470-c. 410 BCE) did not outlook euthanasia as always criminal or unethical (Hendin 2008). By the nineteenth century, although, the medical establishment had arrive to consider as unethical any action or inaction taken by a caregiver that could be sensibly foreseen to outcome in death, and Anglo-American widespread law criminalized such actions as murder and assisting in a suicide (which itself was a crime at the time).

Euthanasia

Euthanasia, a word of Greek origin (from "eu," good and "thanatos", death) which means "good death" is, according to the dictionary of the Real Academia de la Lengua, voluntary shortening the life of those who suffer incurable illness, to end their suffering.

Is it correct to call the euthanasia a "sweet or painless death?"

I think it's one of the most appropriate terms can be given to euthanasia, because as I have seen the research for this essay, I have noticed that within the purpose of euthanasia is doing the death of a terminally ill patient something as painless as possible, taking into account that this patient has no hope of life, and has had to endure all the suffering involved in a disease of those characteristics, so that it is ending as soon as possible with such conditions and ensure that patient death is something of a supported release of the ordeals in life, so it is properly called a painless death, because as explained before and I think it is to release the patient is his suffering, by some method that will produce pain (Peck 2003).

Advocates of the notion of "aid in dying given by the ...