Jarica Otten
Dr. Wright
PHIL-2050-002
1 December 2015
Death with Dignity
Case Study The Death with Dignity Act was passed in Oregon in 1994, and it is another option for dying with those who have terminal diseases. These people that want to die with dignity have to be seen by at least two doctors and have six or less months to live. While making the decision to use this act, the patient must be in a safe mental state to be making this decision. Currently, Oregon, Washington, Vermont, and soon to be California are the only states to carry the Death with Dignity Act. (Death) Brittany Maynard is a twenty nine year old woman who was just recently diagnosed with brain cancer, and after her diagnosis, she found out she had only six short months
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Brittany Maynard was a twenty nine year old woman who married her husband just a year before she passed away. Before she passed, she was diagnosed with a terminal disease, brain cancer. Her doctors gave her six months to live and using treatment might shorten her already short amount of time that she had left to live. Maynard and her family uprooted from their home in San Francisco, California and moved to Portland, Oregon. In Oregon, she planned to get new physicians and after attending appointments, she could be prescribed a lethal pill that would end her life. She wanted to live her last six months happily, and she didn’t want to suffer and have her family watch her suffer. (Death) She wanted to be able to end her life on her own terms, and not when the cancer says that she had to. She received a lot of unkind criticism for her choice. Death with Dignity Act, or the use of assisted suicide is morally justifiable, especially in Brittany Maynard’s …show more content…
Euthanasia is defined in our ethics book as “good death”. (MacKinnon) The chapter in our ethics book actually contains quite a bit of information about assisted suicide and the Death with Dignity Act. According to the chapter, assisted suicide would be considered as physician assisted suicide because the patient’s doctor has to prescribe the patient a prescription in order for assisted suicide to take place. The physician is helping the suicide take place, but they aren’t actually administering it. Another thing that assisted suicide would be considered as is voluntary euthanasia, because the patient is making a valid decision and they are mentally stable enough to make the decision on their own. (MacKinnon) Nowadays, doctors have worked to come up with the most ethical way of helping those who are interested in assisted suicide, the lethal pill. Suicide today, not including assisted suicide, has been increasing in drastic numbers. They don’t get to say goodbye to their families. Everything is just left exactly how it ends. If patients are considering suicide anyways, someone telling them they can or cannot have an assisted suicide will not change their thoughts. It is better to die a good death surrounded with friends and family rather than a bad, and sufferable death. This is why Maynard chose the option that she did, she wanted to go when she was ready and with her
Even though many states don’t support physician assisted suicide there are a few states that have approved the measure. Vermont, Montana, Oregon, and Washington are the very few that allow physician assisted suicide. Other states have not passed a law approving this action.. Oregon is one of the few states that allows doctors to preform assisted suicide. Oregon has a few requirements in the law to execute this procedure: the patient has to be at least 18 years of age, a resident of Oregon, and a terminal illness that will lead to death within six months or less. The number of assisted suicide deaths in Oregon has increased over the years. In 2009 there were 59, 65 deaths in 2010, 71 deaths in 2011, and 77 deaths in 2012. There has been a 30% increase of assisted suicides deaths since 2009 (Schadenberg). This shows that some states are more progressive than others in accepting and working with the terminally ill. The assisted suicide law in Oregon does not preve...
The ethical issues of physician-assisted suicide are both emotional and controversial, as it struggles with the issue of life and death. If you take a moment and imagine how you would choose to live your last day, it is almost guaranteed that it wouldn’t be a day spent lying in a hospital bed, suffering in pain, continuously being pumped with medicine, and living in a strangers’ body. Today we live in a culture that denies the terminally ill the right to maintain control over when and how to end their lives. Physicians-assisted suicide “is the voluntary termination of one's own life by the administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician” (Medical Definition of Physician-Assisted Suicide, 2017). Physician-assisted
Both Brittany Maynard and Craig Ewert ultimately did not want to die, but they were aware they were dying. They both suffered from a terminal illness that would eventually take their life. Their worst fear was to spend their last days, in a state of stress and pain. At the same time, they would inflict suffering on their loved ones as their family witnessed their painful death. Brittany and Craig believed in the notion of dying with dignity. The states where they both resided did not allow “active voluntary euthanasia or mercy killing at the patient’s request” (Vaughn 269). As a result, they both had to leave their homes to a place that allowed them to get aid in dying. Brittany and Craig were able to die with dignity and peace. Both avoiding
Brittany Maynard was a 29 year old woman, she was thriving and loving life then, she was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. Brittany did a lot of research about her cancer and she finally realized that there wouldn’t be any good outcome. After fighting the cancer for months, she had the option of living in her home with hospice coming in and caring for her. Brittany made the decision to move to Oregon with her family to be protected by the Death with Dignity law. She wanted to be able to die when it felt ‘right’. She wanted to say when enough was enough and she said all her goodbyes. Brittany also didn’t want to have hospice take care of her, because she would just be suffering and in pain for who knows how long, wondering when the time will be that she dies. Her family would have to sit there and watch that day by day. How could a family do that? Brittany chose not to go through radiation and lived her life to the fullest with her family happy and smiling, until that time felt ‘right’ and she couldn’t go on any longer. She actually had the medication for a long time, before she took it, because she didn’t want to die, but dying was going to happen anyway. She wanted to die on her terms. When my suffering becomes too great, I can say to all those I love, "I love you; come be by my side,
“On October 27, 1997 Oregon enacted the Death with Dignity Act which allows terminally-ill Oregonians to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician for that purpose.” (The Oregon Health Authority, 2010). Physician assisted suicide can be constructed to have reasonable laws which still protect against its abuse and the value of human life. Recent Oregon and U.K. laws show that you can craft reasonable laws that prevent abuse and still protect the value of human life. When one thinks of suicide, we think of a person who takes their own life. But in physician-assisted suicide, this is not the case. “In physician-assisted suicide, the patient self...
In 1994, Oregon passed the Death with Dignity Act. This law states that Oregon residents, who have been diagnosed with a life ending disease and have less than six months to live, may obtain a lethal medicine prescribed by a physician, which would end their life when and where they chose to do so. This law or act requires the collection of data from patients and physicians and publishes it in an annual r...
As any individual can imagine, there is a lot of suffering and pain in most, if not all hospital settings. At times, no amount of medication or experimental treatment can change an individual’s mind on the quality of their life, such that the only way to end their suffering is to die, hence physician assisted suicide. Defined as a patient taking their own life with the help of a physician, this assisted suicide practice is highly controversial and illegal in most but California, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Vermont. Putting the law aside, the morality of the practice itself is still questioned.
The biggest reason supporting assisted suicide is that should it be an individual’s civil right. Heather Newton, a graduate from
Office of Disease Prevention and Epidemiology. (n.d.). Frequently Asked Questions: Death with Dignity Act. Oregon Health Authority. Retrieved October 7, 2011, from http://public.health.oregon.gov/PROVIDERPARTNERRESOURCES/
In many interviews she explained how she was not suicidal, but wanted to end her life on her own terms. She stated: “I would not tell anyone else that he or she should choose death with dignity. My question is: Who has the right to tell me that I don’t deserve this choice?” (CNN, 2014). She felt that she didn’t want to put her family through physical and emotional pain and that she thought it was her right to make that choice for herself. She said once she had the prescription in her hands that she had felt a tremendous sense of relief (CNN, 2014). She stated that she felt in control and that she could move forward in her remaining days and enjoy her family knowing that she had a safety net (CNN, 2014). Brittany Maynard ended her life on November 1, 2014 by taking the prescribed medication for assisted
Imagine, if you will, that you have just found out you have a terminal medical condition. Doesn’t matter which one, it’s terminal. Over the 6 months you have to live you experience unmeasurable amounts of pain, and when your free of your pain the medication you’re under renders you in an impaired sense of consciousness. Towards the 4th month, you begin to believe all this suffering is pointless, you are to die anyways, why not with a little dignity. You begin to consider Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS). In this essay I will explain the ethical decisions and dilemmas one may face when deciding to accept the idea of Physician-Assisted Suicide. I will also provide factual information pertaining to the subject of PAS and testimony from some that advocate for legalization of PAS. PAS is not to be taken lightly. It is the decision to end one’s life with the aid of a medical physician. Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary states that PAS is “Suicide by a patient facilitated by means (as a drug prescription) or by information (as an indication of a lethal dosage) provided by a physician aware of the patient’s intent.” PAS is considered, by our textbook – Doing Ethics by Lewis Vaughn, an active voluntary form of euthanasia. There are other forms of euthanasia such as non-voluntary, involuntary, and passive. This essay is focusing on PAS, an active voluntary form of euthanasia. PAS is commonly known as “Dying/Death with Dignity.” The most recent publicized case of PAS is the case of Brittany Maynard. She was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer in California, where she lived. At the time California didn’t have Legislative right to allow Brittany the right to commit PAS so she was transported to Oregon where PAS is legal....
...oyed in the background. On November 1, 2014 Brittany passed peacefully in her bedroom just like she had planned. Some may not agree with the fact that Britany planned her death, but many can see that she no longer had to suffer, and her family no longer had to watch her suffer. Instead of nature taking its course and killing Brittany through unbearable pain, she was able to pass peacefully with loved ones at her side, and with the chance to say “goodbye”.
Even when the act passed in Oregon, it was by a close vote of only 51.31% to 48.69% (“Death with Dignity”, 2015). 20 years later, it is still widely discussed and debated throughout the United States. There are many different groups and individuals that either strongly support or are strongly opposed to the Death with Dignity Act. Two of these groups are the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization, which supports the DWDA, and the International Task Force on Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide which does not support the act.
Assisted suicide brings up one of the biggest moral debates currently circulating in America. Physician assisted suicide allows a patient to be informed, including counseling about and prescribing lethal doses of drugs, and allowed to decide, with the help of a doctor, to commit suicide. There are so many questions about assisted suicide and no clear answers. Should assisted suicide be allowed only for the terminally ill, or for everyone? What does it actually mean to assist in a suicide? What will the consequences of legalizing assisted suicide be? What protection will there be to protect innocent people? Is it (morally) right or wrong? Those who are considered “pro-death”, believe that being able to choose how one dies is one’s own right.
In addition, the death with dignity act is performed through euthanasia which is the practice of intentionally ending a life to relieve pain and suffering. Since the death with dignity act isn't legalized all within america, it is a struggle among patients who rely on it. For instance, 3 years ago, 29 year old Brittany Maynard diagnosed with terminal brain cancer decided to move from her hometown California to Oregon, to take advantage of Oregon's death with dignity law. In other words, it allowed terminally ill patients, such as Brittany to choose where and when they want to die. After specialists told Brittany that she had 6 months to live, she was in a predicament to either follow a treatment plan which might ease her pain, but seriously diminish the quality of her remaining life, or reject the treatment and enable her family to watch her slowly suffer and die. however, Brittany looked for a third alternative and states that, “I did not want this nightmare scenario for my family,”(www.) On November 1st, Brittany planned to choose to end her miserable life in Oregon around her friends and family which Britanny called the ring of love. Without death with dignity, life can in fact, turn out to be hopeless since the terminally ill patient