Physician Assisted Suicide Research Paper
Ethical Reasons for Assisted Suicide
PHI208 July 28, 2014
A topic that has been around a while is physician-assisted suicide. James Rachels, an ethicists, believes a person who is virtually certain to die within a given amount of time and is experiencing or will experience a lot of pain before he or she dies should be able to choose an earlier, less painful death (Mosser, 2013). People have a right to end their life whenever they choose because some people living with a terminal illness do not want to suffer, there may not be anything the doctors can do to help them have a comfortable death, and it is their life and they have the right to make that decision.
First, people have the right to end their life when they choose because they do not want to suffer anymore. There are people in this world who live with a terminal illness knowing their days are numbered. Pain has been associated with death for a long time. No one, especially the people who are dying of an illness, want to die in pain. Patients tell doctors they would rather die at home than at …show more content…
Unusually great pain or a terminal condition or an irreversible coma or advances senility or extreme degradation is the disqualifying quality of life that pleads –choice or no choice- for merciful termination (Kass, 1989). Even though the number of people who are dying with a large amount of pain is low, that does not mean that there are people who are not comfortable. Doctors are only able to give so much pain medication to a person. If given enough medication, one may be so drugged they are not even themselves. That is no way to live. Dr. Balfour Mount, from the College of Family Physicians, once said, “People do not have to die with pain” (Palliummia, 2011). To me, this means that people have a
PHI208 July 28, 2014
A topic that has been around a while is physician-assisted suicide. James Rachels, an ethicists, believes a person who is virtually certain to die within a given amount of time and is experiencing or will experience a lot of pain before he or she dies should be able to choose an earlier, less painful death (Mosser, 2013). People have a right to end their life whenever they choose because some people living with a terminal illness do not want to suffer, there may not be anything the doctors can do to help them have a comfortable death, and it is their life and they have the right to make that decision.
First, people have the right to end their life when they choose because they do not want to suffer anymore. There are people in this world who live with a terminal illness knowing their days are numbered. Pain has been associated with death for a long time. No one, especially the people who are dying of an illness, want to die in pain. Patients tell doctors they would rather die at home than at …show more content…
Unusually great pain or a terminal condition or an irreversible coma or advances senility or extreme degradation is the disqualifying quality of life that pleads –choice or no choice- for merciful termination (Kass, 1989). Even though the number of people who are dying with a large amount of pain is low, that does not mean that there are people who are not comfortable. Doctors are only able to give so much pain medication to a person. If given enough medication, one may be so drugged they are not even themselves. That is no way to live. Dr. Balfour Mount, from the College of Family Physicians, once said, “People do not have to die with pain” (Palliummia, 2011). To me, this means that people have a