Assisted Suicide

Assisted Suicide

Introduction

The term assisted suicide is a literal translation of English assisted suicide, which comes from the United States. Jacques Pohier in the timely death addresses the question of terminology. The concept of assisted suicide has little to do with the general phenomenon of suicide and applies only to cases of people with terminal illness who would be justified to seek voluntary euthanasia. Why then talk of suicide, especially the latter, considered as an individual pathology or social, has a pejorative connotation? The term voluntary death, which sometimes used, is not precise enough, because it covers both voluntary euthanasia than suicide. The term assistance (medical) suicide would have been preferable, if one implies "assistance to the person, upon request, opting for suicide in the case of serious illness, hopeless and accompanied pain, we cannot adequately relieve (Childress, 1999).” Since in the francophone countries such as Switzerland, the Belgium or the Quebec, the term assisted suicide used without hesitation.

Discussion

Voluntary Euthanasia

As for the action of assisted suicide even if it is a variant of voluntary euthanasia, it must be subject to the same ethical and legal considerations. The difference between the two acts is the fact that euthanasia performed by someone other than the patient, usually a physician, while assisted suicide is an act by which the patient gives her death. The doctor, or sometimes another person, assists the patient decided to die voluntarily making available a suitable drug, that it can be administered, or an instrument which he would draw the hour of his choice. In the case of assisted suicide (Ardelt, 2003), the patient himself who is the main actor of his decisive move and it does not undergo passive medical intervention, as is the case of euthanasia.

Some doctors and ethicists prefer assisted suicide to euthanasia, because the extravagant will to die is more apparent, and the physician's role reduced to professional help. We also know that, for example, the Netherlands *, the physician must remain with the patient until death occurred. This honorable presence can be done in a discreet and friendly. She surely the effect of increasing the feeling of safety of the patient's technically and mentally. Indeed, suicide is not an act technically easy to do, especially if we are to avoid violent means or if one ignores the nature and dosage of drugs.

Most pharmaceuticals are only available by prescription and administered intravenously. In addition, complications can occur. As about voluntary euthanasia, some critics complain that this kind of technical assistance to strengthen controls on the medical end of life and increase its authority over the so-called free decision of the patient (Darity, 2008). One can also wonder why it is necessary to use a medical or paramedical when these drugs are available and reliable, we know their dosage and a close relative or a trusted person is able to provide to the ill or elderly. In fact, assisted suicide sometimes practiced by non-physicians. Pohier and does not hesitate to tell his "Little deaths of five chronic friendly volunteers assisted" (p. 279-314) its own methods of assisted suicide, which ...