The Ethical Debate: Assisted Suicide

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Today a hot topic up for conversation is the right to assisted suicide. People are either for it because they can put aside their own feelings and can have respect for the dying. And then there are those that are against it because of their own religious or moral reasons. Either way there are two sides and phsycicans are also still divided on the topic. A lot of people question the competence of the terminically ill, many of which are in the final stages of their lives and request doctors to help them in exervising active euthanasia. For myself, it is sad to think those people are in such agony and sadness that to them the only hope of bringing that agony to a stop is through assisted suicide. Most recently was a women named Brittany Maynard, who at 29 years young was diagnosed with grade II Astrocytoma and was given 6 months to live and documented her last few months in youtube videos.
When people see the word euthanasia, they see the meaning of the word in two different lights. Euthanasia for some carries a negative connotation; it is the same as murder. For others, euthanasia is the act of putting someone to death painlessly, or allowing a person suffering from an incurable and painful disease or condition …show more content…

is just a means of prolonging suffering. Some terminal patients in the past have gone to their doctors and asked for a final medication that would take all the pain away— lethal drugs. For example, as Ronald Dworkin recounts, Lillian Boyes, an English woman who was suffering from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis, begged her doctor to assist her to die because she could no longer stand the pain (184). Another example is Dr. Ali Khalili, Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s 20th patient. According to Kevorkian’s attorney, “Dr. Khalili was a pain specialist; he could get any kind of pain medication, but he came to Dr.

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