Physician-Assisted Suicide
Physician-assisted suicide has been a highly controversial topic in health care, giving rise to heated discussions. These debates touched upon a variety of social, religious, legal, and ethical issues. While some support it as a merciful way to end people's lives, others oppose physician-assisted suicide, seeing the permission to perform such actions as a way to murder and abuse of patients. The religious thought has also been for the most part opposed to the idea.
In order to understand whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed, one needs first of all to determine what is implied by the term. The definition given the American Geriatrics Society (2002)defines it as an act ``when a physician provides either equipment or medication , or informs the patient of the most efficacious use of already available means , for the purpose of assisting the patient to end his or her own life . This can also be called direct euthanasia as opposed to indirect one where the doctor administers medication that can cause death as a side effect but does not directly provide means to end one's life. For instance, someone turning off life support would be engaged in indirect euthanasia, whereas a clinician administering a lethal injection would be involved in physician-assisted suicide.
Medical ethics has accepted the definition of Physical Assisted Suicide as a passive and voluntary involvement where the physician lets the patient die by refraining from interventions which would be useless in any case, in accordance with the wishes of the patient, it is considered moral on the grounds that it is disease and not the physician who is doing the killing, treatment for the dying patient is thought to be pointless in any case, and a patient should not be subjected to interventions that bring about more harm than benefit.
The Hippocratic Oath is often invoked against the morality of physician involvement in deaths of patients. That oath declares: “I... [continues]
Physician-assisted suicide has been a highly controversial topic in health care, giving rise to heated discussions. These debates touched upon a variety of social, religious, legal, and ethical issues. While some support it as a merciful way to end people's lives, others oppose physician-assisted suicide, seeing the permission to perform such actions as a way to murder and abuse of patients. The religious thought has also been for the most part opposed to the idea.
In order to understand whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed, one needs first of all to determine what is implied by the term. The definition given the American Geriatrics Society (2002)defines it as an act ``when a physician provides either equipment or medication , or informs the patient of the most efficacious use of already available means , for the purpose of assisting the patient to end his or her own life . This can also be called direct euthanasia as opposed to indirect one where the doctor administers medication that can cause death as a side effect but does not directly provide means to end one's life. For instance, someone turning off life support would be engaged in indirect euthanasia, whereas a clinician administering a lethal injection would be involved in physician-assisted suicide.
Medical ethics has accepted the definition of Physical Assisted Suicide as a passive and voluntary involvement where the physician lets the patient die by refraining from interventions which would be useless in any case, in accordance with the wishes of the patient, it is considered moral on the grounds that it is disease and not the physician who is doing the killing, treatment for the dying patient is thought to be pointless in any case, and a patient should not be subjected to interventions that bring about more harm than benefit.
The Hippocratic Oath is often invoked against the morality of physician involvement in deaths of patients. That oath declares: “I... [continues]
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