Preview

Persuasive Speech On Physician Assisted Suicide

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1290 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Persuasive Speech On Physician Assisted Suicide
Throughout the 21st century, the progress of medical advancement has greatly enhanced the quality of human beings’ lives. However, certain illnesses still remain incurable, from which some people are afflicted with great and constant physical distress. The question becomes whether or not the patients have the freedom to choose terminating their lives because the prolonging of life may consist of only pain and suffering. This is the basic idea of physician assisted suicide (PAS). PAS has raised heated debate and antagonism between different groups, and it is also one of the most controversial issues in our society nowadays.
Advocates have a variety of justifications and explanations for PAS. They claim that patients don’t want to go through the suffering caused by terminal illness, so they
…show more content…
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect,” wrote Hippocrates, the father of medicine. We can infer from the famous Hippocratic Oath that the ultimate aim of the medical profession is to save lives as its ethic rather than to kill people. As a result, the involvement in physician assisted suicide by health care professionals becomes potentially unreliable. Since most physicians and other health-care professionals are ethical and humane individuals, and it is believed that their discipline, training, and experience prepares them to exercise the power of controlling life and death more wisely than any other group of individuals, then how could they write lethal overdose prescriptions to patients, or not press the “code blue ”button to call the rescue team? The ideology of physician assisted suicide undermines not only the basic morality of all medical professionals, but even of our essential

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    On California’s political calendar, physician-assisted suicide is considered to be a “done-deal” as the End-of-Life Option Act (SB 128) has many supporters. Their message is clear: like women’s suffrage, gay marriage, and higher minimum wage, it's inevitable that physician-assisted suicide becomes legal because, after all, it is a human right to make that decision.…

    • 631 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Physician Assisted Suicide

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Public opinion on suicide acceptability through a physician has become a very controversial topic in today’s world. In the following, six scholarly articles will be reviewed. In each article one will give their opinion to the matter of physician-assisted suicide and provide arguments to back up their claim. Most of these articles are from physicians themselves and others close to their field to give insight.…

    • 1166 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Euthanasia the assisted killing of a terminal patient is a controversial topic that medical professionals cannot avoid. Many health professionals face the ethical dilemma of whether or not they should end a patient’s misery. Patient’s rights are always the top priority, doctors are taught to find every possible way to treat and cure the patient, but the possibility of the patient being irremediable to what extent is the health care professionals willing to go to give the patient their wishes?…

    • 920 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Physician-assisted suicide, also known as PAS, gives patients in critical medical conditions the right to end their lives. Physician-assisted suicide is currently legal in three American states, which are Oregon, Washington, and Montana. Morrow informs, “Between 1994 and 2006, there were 75 legislative bills to legalize PAS in 21 states and all of them failed” (1). Patients suffering from chronic illness often contemplate suicide, because the pain and suffering may just be never ending. Some believe that trust between a doctor and patient would be broken, knowing that the doctor and kill their patient. Although in reality it should create a stronger trust, and a sense of security. Patients would not be sitting around in bed wondering when or how their doctors are going to kill them. It’s every person’s own freedom and shouldn’t be taken away from them. Patients in critical condition should choose whether or not to take their own lives and put an end to their suffering via physician-assisted suicide.…

    • 1155 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Those in favor of physician-assisted suicide argue that the patients that seek it as a viable option do so because their disease is beyond treatment and other options do not preserve their dignity and right to a peaceful death. In choosing physician assisted suicide, the patient maintains control over their final days and even hours on this earth. They can prepare themselves and their loved ones for their death and knowing when it will happen can often provide a sense of peace. (Cite info in favor of pas here)…

    • 1087 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    Imagine being sentenced to a slow and painful death due to terminal illness. Sounds like…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagine yourself sitting in the doctor’s office and you have just been diagnosed with a terrible, terminal disease. The doctors were very late catching it, and they tell you there is not much they can do for you other than make you comfortable for the last phase of your life. You do however; have a couple options for care. You can decide to fight it with medications anyway regardless of the phase of the illness, or you can accept the medications to make you comfortable until the end. Now fast forward a few months, and imagine yourself in hospice care. You are under round the clock supervision and medications to “ease your pain”.…

    • 883 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    As you can tell, Physician assisted suicide has come a long way and yet still has a long way to go. Only a few states are on board but that’s more than there ever were. The question for you is, if you were in that position, if you were terminally ill, would you want to keep pushing and suffering through the pain when you know you only have 6 months or less to live? I guess that is the debate, whether or not, you, the people, would follow through with the act if you had the opportunity to die with dignity or would you become a vegetable, so to speak. I know, it’s easier said than done.…

    • 117 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    I would like you to step back from your collected thoughts and think about Assisted Suicide. Assisted Suicide is a very delicate and controversial subject around the world and has been for many years. Euthanasia is also a term commonly used for or with assisted suicide. Both of these terms defined mean the purposeful act of death by a terminally ill person going through pain and suffering, with the assistance of a doctor, family member, or any other willing individual. By reading The Merrian-Webster Dictionary and Thesaraus, I have found out that assisted suicide and euthanasia definition and information, have strayed from the original background. Upon reading about this subject, I would not have thought that it all originated from Greece.…

    • 1897 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Mercy killing has been in the moral code of humankind since the genesis of society. From the Coup de grâce applied to wounded animals by the Native Americans, to the Seppuku Japanese samurai practiced, dying with dignity has been prioritized over a painful death. If there's something history has proved, it's that compassion is a fundamental value. Isn't euthanasia an act of compassion? Euthanasia is a choice of good life, rather than a choice of death.…

    • 378 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Suicide. Some imagine the unsuccessful businessman slowly bringing a gun to his head. Some see Romeo and Juliet uniting themselves for eternity though death. Others remember Lifetime Television Movies about women in their twenties who overdose on over the counter pills. But there are as many different reasons for suicide as there are people. Take for example, Jeannine. At the age of 103 Jeannine decided that she had lived a full life. She stopped taking her medications and died a few days later in her sleep. Jeannine was healthy for her age and for the most part able to care of herself. Although she committed suicide, her particular case should not carry the false connotation of misery which often accompanies such deaths. Jeannine was not miserable; she merely chose to consciously and responsibly plan her death.…

    • 477 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    insurance can be made to feel as if they are a burden to the people around them. The…

    • 1974 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    You’re visiting the hospice for the twenty third day in a row, the bright flickering of the fluorescents and the squeaking of the linoleum floor greet you as you walk in. You are visiting your great grandmother, whose ninety three years old with a broken neck, who is unable to speak or eat. She hasn’t talked to you in several weeks due to the feeding tube and has lost the ability to move. She is a hollow shell of the woman she once was and her bright blue eyes have been fading endlessly every day. Her funny and bubbly attitude has become crushed and every single day as you leave you think to yourself if she should still continue living or not with the way she is. That’s when she’s able to finally talk and whispers “I don’t want to live anymore,”…

    • 1688 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Imagine you just received bad news from your doctor. 6 months to live if you are lucky. You are suffering from chronic pain that no medicine will ease. You are slowly wasting away while suffering from delirium, not being able to breathe, and you have no appetite from being nauseated constantly and you're constantly throwing up. There is no chance to survive and death is the only cure. You have made out your will and said your goodbyes. You are ready to die If you could choose assisted suicide would you?…

    • 440 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are individuals I have met who have been tired of fighting their cancer and decide to give in. Their lives change drastically and not only are they affected, but those who care for them are as well. It can be so hard to live through such pain and changes. The treatments offered often are not beneficial or painless. Dealing with a lifestyle change, constant pain, and huge medical bills can be extremely stressful. These are just some of the reasons many terminally ill patients, look into a physician assisted suicide. For these same exact reasons, patients have every right to decide when they can’t take the pain any longer.…

    • 918 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays