Critical Essay: Killing Me Softly By Susan Trossman

Killing Me Softly Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old woman, discovers she has brain cancer. She looks back on her full life; traveling the world, teaching orphans overseas, climbing mountains, falling in love, and getting married. So young, but has experienced so much joy. Now, she looks ahead at the future. “Diagnosed with a rapidly growing brain tumor, Maynard says she faces a debilitating, painful and certain death.” (Luscombe 1). Treatment for this aggressive dark matter can extend her life to a median survival of 14.6 months, 30% may live up to two years. After doing her research, she chooses to not spend the next year battling the inevitable outcome of death. She chooses to face “death with dignity.” Susan Trossman refers to Maynard in

Ancient Rome approved of voluntary suicide and continued to sanction it through the Middle Ages.”( Lachman 121). Since then, the introduction of the Christian church is believed to be the reason behind the changed views by pointing out what they considered sinful nature. In 1990 “Dr. Death”, or Dr. Kavorkian began helping patients commit suicide. “By the end of 1996 Kevorkian had assisted in beyond 40 suicides,” “by his own count, by 1997 he had assisted in at least 130.” (Darr 31, 32). One of the most recent highly publicized related examples is of course Brittany Maynard. She moved to Oregon to gain advantage of the states Assisted Suicide

In my opinion you are playing God either way. Someone chose to place the feeding tube, maybe the person(s) placed one with hopes she would come back and overcome. When this did not happen, they decided to let her pass. Do we know if she had made a decision before to accept treatment of such a nature? This is one circumstance in which, if the patient had a living will, this could have all been avoided. I can not condemn the family for trying to give her time to recover from her current state. The exceedingly important opposition in the debate on PAS, AE, and Withdrawal of life sustaining medical treatments, is the religious argument. Ethically, “the sanctity of life overrides the right of individuals to choose how and when they will die.” (Ersek49). The basic definition of suicide is the act of knowingly committing an act that will cause one 's self death. With that in mind, if a person knows that smoking will eventually kill them, is that not a form of suicide. If a doctor tells a patient that his arteries will continue clogging and if they do not exercise and start eating right, they will experience a heart attack and die, and the patient does nothing, is this not a form of slow suicide? People are slowly killing themselves sooner everyday by their decisions. If a patient with cancer decide to chose PAS, are they not just killing themselves sooner? Yes, I admit it is certainly quicker than eating a pound