Buy essay on Physicians Assisted Suicide

The wish not to be a burden. There is a real danger that people will ask about death, because they don’t want to be a burden to their family and friends. Under the “burden” I mean money, time, or even emotional effort required to care for the sick and weak person.
Perhaps asking for PAS, people hope to ease the burden of their families. Perhaps they think that the forces and means that the government spends on these could be used much more productively. If PAS will be allowed, there is a serious risk that patients will be pushed to it, either by direct persuasion or by deliberate neglect on the part of the family.
Physicians may contribute to this pressure on the patient by their attitude to the tools and medicines, which are spent on his treatment. Generally, for family members and even professionals-doctors it will be quite difficult to make adequate decisions about the value of the life of another person. However, the hallmark of a healthy society is a high-quality care for its weakest and most defenseless members. Rather than allow such people to “get out of life”, we should find effective ways to provide them with optimal care and treatment (Snyder. 2002).
Trust and service. Doctors and patients have very special relationship. First of all, these relations are based on trust and belief that a doctor will always act for the benefit of the patient, trying not to cause him any harm. It is recognized and encouraged in a number of ancient medical oaths and health codes. Legalization of PAS will give physicians unprecedented power over life and death. It may happen that the original trust of the patient to the doctor will be seriously undermined.
It will be extremely difficult to control the enforcement of the PAS law, especially because the main witness of any such process will be already dead (Hawkins. 2002).
At the same time, society will begin to forget how much good it does us to care for vulnerable people and care for the weak and sick. The thing that was initially intended as the modernization of treatment and care, can easily lead to the loss of an entire sector of medical and nursing practice and the loss of any ability to care for those who are ill, but did not wish to prematurely terminate their lives.
Moreover, PAS can change society’s attitude towards death and disability, and as a result, the whole society can become more callous and indifferent, thinking of those who need complex or expensive treatment and care, as about the second-class citizens. As a result, we can completely lose touch with reality, believing that for every complex problem there is certainly an easy and quick solution (Mappes. 2006).
Law and suicide. There is a common misconception that the law on suicide, passed in 1961, gave certain categories of people the right to take their own lives. In fact, it ruled out suicide of the number of crimes punishable by law, but it is doing its utmost to prevent a person to commit it.
In general, a person who wants to commit suicide is sick and needs treatment and care. It is said in an official document of the British Government on health issues, entitled “Saving Lives: The Way to a Healthy Nation”(Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. 1999). One of the key objectives, of the government is to reduce the suicide rate by at least 20% by 2010. Introduction of PAS will be a serious obstacle to achieving this goal.
Experience. The PAS or euthanasia, in one form or another, is allowed only in a few countries. The most famous of these is the Netherlands, where the law though does not allow euthanasia, but accepts the standard arguments in defense of doctors who acted in accordance with officially established norms. Those standards require the patient’s consent to be voluntary, and his suffering – not measurable relief. And nowhere is indicated that the patient must suffer from an incurable disease, and his suffering must be physical.
When the commission of the House of Lords of Great Britain visited Holland to learn about the local system and evaluate its effectiveness, the impressions of the Parliament members were rather bleak (Report of the Select Committee on Medical Ethics. 1993-94). According to official statistics, from 3000 people who died as a result of euthanasia, more than 1000 cases couldn’t find any evidence that the patient himself, voluntarily asked for euthanasia (Van der Maas et al.1991). This shows that the PAS may be the first step on a slippery slope leading to forced euthanasia.
Assisted suicide is legal in the three American states of Oregon (via the Oregon Death with Dignity Act), Washington (by Washington Initiative 1000), and Montana (through a trial court ruling).
On the 27th of October 1997 the authorities of Oregon legalized PAS, despite protests from the American Medical Association and leaders of Christian churches. “The law of death and dignity,” allows patients whose quality of life is significantly and irreversibly deteriorated, ask the doctor for medication that will help them to commit suicide.
According to official statistics, in 1998 in Oregon 15 people died from a lethal overdose (Chin et al. 1999). However, the same official document points out that the law has flaws that could lead to a distortion of data. For example, physicians have the right not to report about the case of PAS, if the process had been committed with violations.
The latest report shows that at least 36 terminally ill people died last year after taking lethal medication prescribed by doctors under Washington State’s new physician-assisted suicide law (Yardley. 2010).
According to the annual report of Oregon, whose law went into effect in 1998, 59 people died last year from lethal medication prescribed under the law; 95 prescriptions were filled. A total of 460 patients have died under the law in Oregon (Yardley. 2010).
The debate on the PAS in the United States was also in April 1999 when the Court of Michigan has sentenced Dr. Jack Kevorkiana minimum to 10 years in prison for second-degree murder of Thomas Jouko, who suffered from Charcot’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Zealous defender of the PAS legalization and euthanasia, Kevorkian says that he helped to die at least 130 patients (Johnson. 2009).
Positive Alternative. There is an irreconcilable contradiction between good medical practice and killing people. The work of Hospice and Palliative Medicine clearly show that physician-assisted suicide is a positive alternative, implying pain relief, rather than killing the patient.
Of course, everyone wants a good death for themselves, their families and their patients, but a good death is not always just the most convenient.

Work Cited:

Behuniak, Susan M., Svenson, Arthur G. (2003). Physician-Assisted Suicide: the Anatomy of a Constitutional Law Issue. p. 87. Print.
Chin et al (1999) New England Journal of Medicine; 340: 577-583
Gorsuch, Neil McGill. (2006). The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. pp. 211-213. Print.
Hastings, Jay D. (October 2004). Physician-Assisted Suicide. Monitor. Vol 35, No. 9. p. 86. Print.
Hawkins, Gail N. (2002). Physician-Assisted Suicide. p. 27. Print.
Foley, Kathleen M., Hendin, Herbert. (2002). The Case against Assisted Suicide: for the Right to End-of-life Care‎. p.52. Print.
Johnson, Kirk. (December 31, 2009). Montana Ruling Bolsters Doctor-Assisted Suicide. The New York Times. Print.
Jochemsen, H., Keown, J. (1999). Med Eth¬ics; 25. pp. 16-21. Print.
Kopelman, Loretta M., De Ville, Kenneth Allen. (2001). Physician-Assisted Suicide: What Are the Issues? p. 114. Print.
Mappes, Thomas A., DeGrazia, David. (2006). Biomedical Ethics. p. 404. Print.
Quill, Timothy E., Battin, M. Pabst. (2004). Physician-Assisted Dying: the Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice. p. 102. Print.
Report of the Select Committee on Medical Ethics – Session 1993-94. HL Paper 21. Print.
Snyder, Lois., Caplan, Arthur L. (2002). Assisted suicide: finding common ground. p. 114. Print.
Saving Lives: Our Healthier Nation. (1999). CM4386. Print.
Van der Maas et al. (1991). Lancet. 338. pp. 669-674. Print.
Yardley, William. (March 4, 2010). Report Finds 36 Died Under Assisted Suicide Law. The New York Times. Print.