Physician Assisted Suicide Essay, Research Paper

Scott DeBoer DeBoer 1

9-26-2001

Physician Assisted Suicide

How could someone wake up every day sick, in constant pain and feeling horrible every minute of existence? This is not a good way to live from anybodies point of view. The time may come when suffering, just is not worth living. In instances such as this, taking ones own life maybe the only relief from pain.

Faith and religion play a large role with the downward opinions about suicide.

For example, the Christian faith believes that dying a truthful, un-tampered death, rather than suicide, is not the way to heaven. People with religious faith, believe physicians are playing God, or taking life when life is not ready. Many people also ague that assisted suicide is murder. Giving a person the equipment and instruction to perform such an act, to some people constitutes at least a manslaughter charge. Another argument against assisted suicide is the mental state of the patients. People say that physicians are brainwashing patients into believing it is time for them to take their lives. Using depression as a tool, to sway the minds of their patients and making them feel like there is no other option.

Religion and faith do not only preach about suicide. Happiness, love, and joy are also strongly believed in the Christian religion. If a patient has reached a point in their life where pain overtakes all other feelings, then other preaches of the religion are compromised. On the subject of murder, the physicians are merely observing the situation, or monitoring for the patients’ safety. The physicians are helping the patients’ complete their wishes not brainwashing them to take their lives. To prove that the mental

state of the patients’ is stable, the physicians perform a series of physiological tests. These tests show on paper that the patients are in their correct state of mind. The patients must be diagnosed with a terminal illness.

Physician assisted suicide should be looked at as a last resort to end the suffering and pain of terminally ill patients. If a patient is to the point of wanting to commit suicide, a physician should be present to make sure that the procedure is done in a quick and painless manner. The physician does make sure that no more bodily damage is caused (by a patient doing the procedure incorrectly). The procedure is done with sanitary methods such as lethal injection into the vein. When physician assisted suicide is clinically proven as a last resort to pain relief it should be performed.