Physician Assisted Suicide History

The history of the debate for physician-assisted suicide has been long, tracing all the way back to the Greek and Roman times. The debate is primarily focused on ethics of the practice. With the popularity of Christianity, many physicians continued to ban Physician-Assisted suicide. Within the last 200 years the public has rejected many discussions about Physician-assisted suicide and Euthanasia from many different historic perspectives. Although this debate has been long and many of the issues discussed over the history of the debate are repetitive, a lot of concerns do come out with the debate. Physician-assisted suicide is when a physician provides medication to a patient with the understanding that the patient intends to use them to commit

In the story of his patient, Diane. Dr. Quill tries to convince physicians to take seriously the request for a patient to die. At this time, Oregon is only state that allows physician-assisted suicide. A large amount of the supporters of the law state that people should have a right to choose when and where one dies. Dr. Quill speaks in favor of legalizing physician-assisted suicide. However, The argument of the right to die comes from the right to end life-sustaining treatment. The writers of the argument say there is no difference between physician-assisted suicide and termination of life-sustaining medicine, since refusal of life-sustaining medicine is an upheld legal right of citizens (Washington v. Glucksberg, 1997). Before the Supreme Court ruling in 1997, some argued that the right to end care would be brought up to physician-assisted suicide and therefore making assisted suicide a right for all citizens. However, the Supreme Court kept Physician-Assisted suicide banned. "I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those who help them should be free from prosecution," Stephen Hawking told BBC in an

In a study of Oregon physicians only 4% of the physicians studied had given a lethal dose of drugs to a patient and administered it, while only 7% of physicians confirmed that they have actually gave the medication. This may seem low, but you must remember at the time the study was conducted it was illegal to write a lethal prescription. There have been Attempts made at nationwide surveys, but a very small amount of them are returned and those that are cannot be confirmed. Therefore, the current popularity of assisted suicide is not known to the public. Assisted-Suicide, if taking place, isn’t usually discussed, due to harsh legal consequences the physician will face if they do