Assisted Suicide Persuasive Essay

Imagine what one can do during the course of his life while here on Earth. This individual can pursue any endeavor during his life and, in this country, has every opportunity to do so. The taking of one’s own life is a tremendous waste of precious human life. What is considered to be even worse is the aiding of this horrendous action by another individual. Assisted suicide is a wasted opportunity in regards to human life and ruins the potential for further life experiences, societal contribution, and self-advancement. Suicide in and of itself is a terrible occurrence for a family to have to go through. The loss of a family member to suicide has the potential to tear a family apart due to the immense amount of grief involved in this tragedy.

Suicide has had an ever present role in the course of human existence. During the Middle Ages, the act of killing one’s self was associated with condemnation. Criminal and social penalties were also brought upon those who even tried attempting suicide. Until the Reformation, suicides were condemned by the church as well as by the state. Until 1823, suicides were denied burial on holy grounds; and were instead buried at night, without a service, and with a stake through the heart. The possessions of this individual were also seized by the state (Hutchinson). Now, granted all of these measures were extreme and unnecessary, they were all still based off of the same principle: suicide should never be an option. The thought process that leads an individual to suicide can never be rationally explained. However, realizing the roots of this problem can help professionals aid those in need.

Many factors can play roles in the leading cause of suicide. The leading cause of suicide is some form of mental illness. Over ninety percent of people who die from suicide have one form of mental illness at the time of their deaths. The most common mental illness throughout these cases is depression. However, diseases such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and others like them can also contribute to one’s suicide. This depression can be brought on by many different occurrences. In some cases, individuals can have a predisposition toward depression. These individuals may not appear to be going through any negative life situations, but still may feel sad. However, the majority of suicides are due to an overwhelming sense of negativity throughout a person’s life. It is extraordinarily rare for one to become depressed because of one situation. In cases of suicide, there are usually several reasons for the individual to be depressed. Some of the more common causes of suicide are: the death of a loved one; the ending of a serious relationship; the effects of substance and physical abuse; the feeling of being helpless or hopeless; and the feeling of not being accepted by family, friends, or society (Caruso). Any combination of these events could drive someone to the thought of suicide. Before understanding the thought process that someone goes through in considering assisted suicide, the history of this unjust action must be read in to.

The first major controversy involving assisted suicide in the United States was centered around Doctor Jack Kevorkian, also known as “Doctor Death” because of his obsession with death and suicide. Kevorkian, after being deemed a specialist in 1960, bounced around the country publishing over thirty professional articles and pieces about his philosophy concerning death. His main goal was to be granted permission to allow death row inmates to be experimented on before their executions. He believed that in doing this he was saving countless amounts of money and did not see the harm in experimenting on people who had already been sentenced to death. His proposal was ultimately rejected and this left Kevorkian in search of a job. After going through a string of multiple different jobs in the span of about fifteen years, Kevorkian finally reached a breakthrough. In 1986, Kevorkian learned of doctors in the Netherlands that were helping people die by lethal injection. In discovering this, Kevorkian’s whole direction was changed. His new campaign for assisted suicide, also called euthanasia, became his main focus in his writings. Most of his writing began to consist of the benefits of euthanasia. After writing so much about the topic, Doctor Jack Kevorkian then wondered how he could physically help the people who were in need of his assistance with euthanasia (Jack).

Jack Kevorkian followed up his many papers and articles with the creation of the suicide machine that he called the “Thanatron”, which was assembled using only about $45 worth of materials. This death machine consisted of that delivered successive doses of three different chemicals. These chemicals were administered in a specific order. The first compound was a simple saline solution, followed by a painkiller, and, finally, a fatal dose of the deadly poison potassium chloride. With the help of Kevorkian’s mechanism, patients would even be able to administer these chemicals themselves (Jack). Terminally ill or seriously afflicted patients could now finally have a way to end their suffering. This dream infamously came true for Kevorkian’s first true patient.

Jack Kevorkian’s first patient’s name was Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Alzheimer’s patient from Michigan.

After being diagnosed with her terrible illness, she sought out a way to end her suffering before it even started. When Adkins heard of Kevorkian’s machine, she instantly saw her way out of this world. She contacted him and went through with the procedure inside of Kevorkian’s van in a public park. Within five minutes of beginning the procedure, Adkins died of heart failure. As this news was leaked to media outlets, Jack Kevorkian became not only a celebrity, but a murderer as well. He was charged with Adkins’s murder by the State of Michigan. However, the case was later dismissed due to Michigan’s unclear stance on assisted suicides (Jack). Cases such as these, while being under totally different circumstances, have been going well before assisted suicide was made infamous by Doctor Jack Kevorkian. People and situations such as these are the reason that many people contemplate assisted suicide in the first place. Stricter laws need to be put in place in order to prevent another “Kevorkian” situation. Human life is too valuable to be eradicated by a machine built in someone’s garage. Although in some instances the decision on whether or not to commit suicide is fairly black and white, a more in depth analysis of the afflicted patient’s mind needs to be taken into consideration for one to truly understand what is

happening.
The desire for assisted suicide comes from a totally different mindset than that of suicide. The technical term for assisted suicide is “physician assisted suicide.” The typical patient that looks for help in committing suicide is one that is either terminally ill or is afflicted by some form of serious illness. The most important reasons that cause patients to turn to assisted suicide as a viable alternative to living the rest of their lives are a desire to control the circumstances of one’s death, a desire to end one’s life in the comfort of his own home, the belief that continuing life is pointless, and simply being ready to embrace death (Why). It is because of these reasons that so many people today see immediate death as a valid means of going out of this world. This mindset cannot be continued to be present in our society. With technology advancing as quickly as it is, a new cure or treatment could arise at any point that could eradicate the disease from the patient. Patients can also be treated within the comfort of their own homes to create a feeling of comfort or serenity. Also, these people need to grasp the fact that no matter how bleak the future may appear to be there is always meaning in life. Precious human life should not be thrown away simply because of how it looks at a specific point in time. Assisted suicide may be beneficial in providing an immediate, permanent response to what may be a temporary problem, there are many more disadvantages to this action that there are advantages.