Physician Assisted Suicide Research Paper

FACTS

What is Physician-Assisted Suicide?
Physician-assisted suicide is the act of a physician prescribing a drug to a patient which drug the patient is able to take on his or her own without the assistance of a medical provider or another person. This drug generally results in unconsciousness within five minutes and death within thirty minutes.
Facts about Physician-Assisted Suicide
-Physician-Assisted Suicide is not a new phenomenon. Suffering has always been a part of human existence. Requests to end suffering by means of death through both physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia have occurred since the beginning of medicine
-Based on a recent study, 57% of physicians practicing today have received a request for physician- assisted
Oregon is the only state that has voted to legalize PAS on October 27, 1997

ARGUMENTS
A state’s prohibition on assisted suicide, like all homicide laws, advances this interest. The Supreme Court concluded that the state of Washington had the right to decline to make judgments about the quality of life that a particular individual may enjoy, and the state could certainly conclude that all persons’ lives, from beginning to end, regardless of physical or mental condition, deserve full protection of the law.
c) Interest of Innocent Third Parties
The Supreme Court cited the New York State Task Force on Life (a commission composed of doctors, ethicists, lawyers, religious leaders, and interested laymen), which commission warned that “[l]egalizing physician-assisted suicide would pose profound risks to many individuals who are ill and vulnerable”, especially those lacking money, and good medical care. The Court stated that if physician-assisted suicide were permitted, many persons might resort to it to spare their family the substantial financial burden of end-of-life healthcare costs.
(d) Integrity of Medical