Euthanasia Essay - Physician Assisted Murder

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Recommended: Hippocratic oath and the ethics of medicine

Physician Assisted Murder Physician assisted suicide is illegal in all states but Oregon. Physician assisted suicide is defined by Religious Tolerance.org: a physician supplies information and/or the means of committing suicide to a person, so that they can easily terminate their own life. The decision of when and where the time of our death should occur is one that only God has the right to decide. Because no person or doctor has the right to end a life, physician assisted suicide should be illegal. Some feel that a terminally ill patient should have a legal right to control the manner in which they die. Physicians and nurses have fought for the right to aid a patient in their death. Many families of the terminally ill have exhausted all of their funds caring for a dying patient and would prefer the option of assisted suicide to bankruptcy. While there are many strong opposing viewpoints, one of the strongest is that the terminally ill patient has the right to die in a humane, dignified manner. However, dignity in dying is not necessarily assured when a trusted doctor, whose professional ethics are to promote and maintain life, injects a terminally ill patient with a lethal dose of morphine. Every culture has a taboo against murder, including our own. The practice of physician assisted suicide is wrong across all religious and cultural groups. According to Leon R. Kass, M.D., the taboo against doctors killing patients, even on request, "is the very embodiment of reason and wisdom. Without it, medicine will have lost its claim to be an ethical and trustworthy profession." Before a physician is allowed to practice medicine, he/she takes the Hippocratic Oath, which is described by Encyclopedia Britannica as " a pledge to prescribe only beneficial treatments, according to his abilities and judgment; to refrain from causing harm or hurt". This oath has been practiced for more than 2000 years. If a doctor breaks that promise and helps a patient to purposely die, then the oath has meant nothing. Physician assisted suicide is illegal in all states but one state. Oregon law states that when a patient requests physician assisted suicide they must be suffering from a disease that will end his or her life within 6 months.

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