Physician Assisted Suicide Research Paper

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Physician-assisted suicide is the voluntary termination of an individual’s life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. The issue of whether doctors have the right to help their patients die has been a controversy for centuries. Correspondingly, this term illustrates the case of Dr. Jack Kevorkian who helped a 52-year-old Lou Gehrig's disease patient commit suicide. The Hippocratic Oath, which is historically taken by physicians, proclaims: “I will keep the sick from harm and injustice. I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it nor will I make a suggestion to this effect.” After ruling in 1997 that Americans do not have the Constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide, …show more content…

Additionally, about 46 people committed suicide in Oregon under the law in 2007. In November of 2008, Washington voters passed a similar provision that allows patients with six or fewer months to live to self-administer lethal doses of medication. However, Washington's former governor Booth Gardner stumped for the law. In an essence, physician-assisted suicide should not be legalized because it violates human dignity and denies equality before the law. Doctors should help their patients die a dignified death of natural causes, not assist in killing. Physicians are trained to cure, not to kill.
Richard Radtke, the author of “A Case against Physician-Assisted Suicide,” reports that the method of physician-assisted suicide varies in each state, as well as providing reasons why physician-assisted suicide is wrong. Consequently, physician-assisted suicide is legal in five US states. It is an option given to individuals by state law in Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and California. Additionally, it is an option given to individuals in Montana via court

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