Assisted Suicide: An Easier Way Out Essay, Research Paper

Assisted Suicide: An Easier Way Out

Doctor Kevorkian and other so-called “death doctors” should be permitted

to assist in the premature deaths of the terminally ill. Although many states

outlaw assisted suicides, nevertheless, they should by made legal for terminally

ill patients. These patients may not want to suffer a long, painful death. The

terminally ill will not get well, they might decide to make the decision of

ending their life alone if they cannot receive proper help, and assisted

suicides may one day be useful in discovering how the human brain works or

perhaps find a cure to some fatal diseases.

First, the terminally ill patients will not get better or become cured

of the disease they have. According to many medical physicians the expression

“terminally ill” means being in the final stages of a disease that is incurable

(Hentoff, p.10). If a person has a despairing disease such as AIDS, that person

may not want to live the rest of their short life with all the pain and

frustration.

Next, the terminally ill might injure their body even more by taking up

the decision in their own hands. Offering help in assisted suicides to the

fatally ill would prevent anything like this from happening. The Second Circuit

Court of Appeals created a law that prohibited physicians from helping their

patients die (Lemonick, p.82). Now, patients who are terminally ill and who

wish to die might decide to kill themselves in a manner that is less humane than

with a lethal injection or dosage of medicine. This new law makes it much

harder to get proper help in attaining an assisted suicide. This clearly would

cause many more problems than it would do good.

Last, there are many ways that using terminally ill patients that can

benefit science and the medical fields. Doctor Kevorkian has been advancing a

proposal to allow condemned criminals and terminally ill patients to perform

tests on their brains while they are still alive and willingly know they will

die soon afterward. Kevorkian claims that these human experiments allow us to

fully understand how the human body functions. He also proposed to allow the

criminals who are condemned to donate their organs for transplant. (Hosenball,

p.28-29). Through studying on live humans we would gain a much greater

understanding of ourselves and possibly discover some new medicinal drugs.

The terminally ill will not recover from their disease, they might

decide to unlawfully take their own life and possibly get hurt severely in the

process, and the experimentation on certain criminals and mortally ill patients

would aid in the development of new drugs. Allowing assisted suicides in our

country would be a great asset and opportunity for people who will not recover

to end all the suffering. The legalization of assisted suicides would prevent

many accidents from occurring such as people committing the act of suicide and

being unsuccessful. Legalizing aided suicides would also prevent people from

killing themselves illegally. With all of the technological advances in our

community today the legalization of aided suicides is a must. For the sake of

all humanity and virtue in our society today, exercise your freedom of choice

and look at assisted suicides with a different, but, moral perspective.

Works Cited

Hentoff, Nat. “From Assisted Suicides to Euthanasia.” Village Voice 14 May

1996: p. 10

Hosenball, Mark. “The Real Jack Kevorkian.” Newsweek 6 Dec. 1996: p. 28-29

Lemonick, Michael. “Defining the Right to Die.” Time 15 Apr. 1996: p. 82