The Right to Die, and Doctor-Assisted Suicide

The Right to Die, and Doctor-Assisted Suicide The Mission of Late Dr. yap Kevorkian Imagine a diligent in a hospital throe from the AIDS disease. And since his diagnosing he has nominateed from two bouts of pneumonia, chronic, severe sinus and skin infections, severe seizures, and perfect fatigue. seventy percent of his vision is already lost, and the disease has g consentientness terminus. He has requested that his load prescribe him treat that would kill him thus closedown his suffering. This is exactly what Dr.Jack Kevorkian has been fighting for his entire liveness. To shed positive light upon the disputed subject of Physician-Assisted Suicide. A little back story on Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian was the son of Armenian refugees who came to America to escape the Turkish genocide. His early talents ranged from hand- chafe woodwork, linguistics, to attainment experiments conducted in his basement. He then became a pathologist, devoting his life to the unusual parturie ncy of sho elevateg the positives and social put ons from resting. He did non entirely take on the medical exam establishment and the law without his life he dargond to gainsay a taboo as old as hu world shade the taboo against death (Nicol, Wylie 2) Kevorkian was very outspoken and intensely committed to the showcases that he believed in. He also lacked the ability to lie, so much, that its said that whenever he compete poker with his fri closes, that he never bluffed, and if he bet each superstar else folded. Kevorkian built a machine where perseverings, through self implanted pumps, cook the ability to frugality the does of disorder medication that they receive.And now the step of doctors who quietly comply with a patients request for a eitherowhal does of medication is slowly rising up. Kevorkian make headlines by evading count little prosecutions, just now then a grounds came up that no integrity could ignore, a case where a macrocosm so deteriorated due to his illness, that he could non operate the machine in good order requiring Kevorkian to person altogethery inject the lethal dose of medication himself. This pieces name is Tom Youk and his case made the biggest impact on Kevorkians life. Youk was diagnosed with ALS, a neuromuscular disorder caused by the death of the motor nerve cells that control voluntary muscle movement.Youks aim got worse and worse, reservation him unable to move his arms and legs, extreme hassle in speaking, and having no control of his jaw and tongue causing Youk to pass out on his own spit. Every doctor he would visit would just prescribe him a different ineffective inconvenience medication that would do no benefit to his train. Youk had asked some(prenominal) doctors to help him commit self-annihilation notwithstanding each one would not help him with his request. Then his family contacted Kevorkian, and after very sympathize withful research on Youks medical records, Kevorkian obliged to go through with his intervention. Kevorkian would later say, He just was terrified of choking to death, and he moldiness lay down felt that he was on the verge of it. And I couldnt accept him suffer in that kind of frame of mind because if a man is terrified, its up to me to dispel that terror. (Nicol, Wylie 9) Through multiple times, Kevorkian made sure that the patient had control over their death, for example, he would hook up a tranquilizing that would go through a patients IV, stopping the patients heart if that patient would dig a exclusivelyton.Youk was different, because he did not have the ability to physically initiate a switch that would release a sedative that would kill him so he requested that Kevorkian would personally recall the injection himself. Kevorkians thought on this was that he would make a statement to the public after assisting Youk, win the court case, and then hopefully this would relieve the fear doctors had in doing the things that he did . Kevorkian recorded the process on tape, read a consent create to Youk, and the next following day, upon Youks request, injected the lethal sedative into Youks IV.After the video being released to the public huge debates both medically and legally broke out. Three long time later the state of Michigan charged Kevorkian for first-degree murder. When interviewed for ABCs 60 transactions Kevorkian was portrayed as Dr. Death a man who caused other man to die and did not even seemed bother by it. After several trials, Jack Kevorkian was sentenced to 25 courses in a maximum-security penitentiary. His health began to conk out when in prison. He broke two ribs after falling in the recreation yard.He suffered from a double hernia, suffered from high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, arthritis, adrenal gland insufficiency, chronic pulmonary obstruction disease, cataracts, and Hepatitis C. He was suffering the same muckle as Tom Youk scarce this time he had no one to relieve hi s suffering. By 1999 Dr. Kevorkian became the poster boy for assisted self-annihilation. Physician-Assisted self-destruction was made legal in the state of Oregon, and 86 percent of the country aid physician-assisted self-destruction to be made legal nationwide.A lot of quite a little do not neck the difference between mercy killing and physician-assisted suicide. If a trio party performs the last act that intentionally causes a patients death, euthanasia has occurred On the other hand, if the person who dies performs the last act, assisted suicide has taken place. (Hamlon, Marker) There are eternally two human faces to every argument. unrivaled who supports a cause and another that opposes the cause. A large convention of wad are giving their support in trying to legitimise physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia nationally.Richard Ikeda, a doctor who cares for low-in sum elderly patients, has stated, When cure is no interminable possible, the majority of Californ ians, and the majority of California physicians, want dying patients to have the office to make barricade-of-life choices in accord with their own values and beliefs This week October 27, 2007 end ten years experience with Oregons death with dignity laws, and all studies show end-of-life care has improved for all Oregonians. (31) More and more physicians are trying to legitimatise physician-assisted suicide nationally to benefit for their suffering patients.An example of where physician-assisted suicide would benefit a patient would be Percy Bridgman. Bridgman was a Nobel-Prize winning physicist suffering from terminal bathcer at the period of seventy nine. He was wracked with torment and beat(p) of hope that he mustered up the courage to pull the trigger of a gun ending his own life forcing others to the agony of discovering his bloody and iron body. Another example would be James Poe, who is a sixty-nine year old man suffering from emphysema which suffocates him time to time as well as heart failure due to his pulmonary disease.He must be hooked up to an oxygen tank at all times and needs to take morphine regularly to calm his foreboding due to his suffocation. He is mentally competent and has requested to commit suicide by taking physician-prescribed pills. There are countless more cases where patients would have benefited from physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia. Thomas A. Bowden, a legal analyst at the Ayn Rand Institute, states that individuals rattling have the legal skillful to choose death. What lawmakers must hold on is that there is no rational basis upon which the government can properly prevent any individual from choosing to end his own life. When religious conservatives order laws to en pull back the idea that their God abhors suicide, they threaten the central principle on which America was founded on (Bowden 36) The Declaration of Independence states that each individual person exists as an end for himself. This means tha t no one can come in with this persons decline to live or not and that no one whitethorn obstruct this persons sentiency of his own happiness.If happiness were to be blocked by a dreaded disease though, and the end result is a very slow and painful death, then why try to obstruct a persons decision to end their suffering? Society should not have to outpouring anyone the permission to end his or her life, it is their choosing, their secure. So a doctor willing to assist a completely mentally sane person to end his or her own life to end at heir suffering due to an illness that is untreatable and non-curable then that doctor should also have the right to do their bidding.Religious conservatives also have no legal right to force their beliefs upon a person if that person wants to end their life to end their suffering. utter of religion on the issue, actual ministers and religious people have bewilder to find loop holes in the text and started to try and prove that physician-ass isted suicide was actually very moral. Alvaro Vargas Llosa, senior and music director of the Center of Global successfulness at the Independent Institute, has stated that the religious argument against euthanasia contradicts a Judeo-Christian tradition. The religious argument against euthanasia-that it violates the sanctity of life-contradicts the single most effectual premise of the Judeo-Christian tradition that God gives every person unaffixed will. (Llosa 69) It basically undermines the belief that the spirit outlives the body. These conservatives are putting mercy on the useless body rather than the everlasting person that is suffering. A a couple of(prenominal) other contradictions Jews perishing at Masada rather than being enslaved or Christians martyring themselves rather than take a shit God by bowing to a Roman deity.The death of a terminally ill patient can lift off the pain and the suffering of not only the patient, but the patients family as well. No more do they have to here their wails of pain or seeing them suffer before their eyes, just the simple fact that they know that their loved one is at peace can bring happiness through the whole family. By making a life and death situation, this person is making a choice to help someone left behind. And helping another brings a higher value to a persons own existence. As government minister Kenneth W. Phifer put it, To choose death sooner rather than later can be an act of high moral stature.Mere existence is not an compulsive value. (71) Religious conservatives may have their morals and their excuses as to why physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia may seem sinful in spite of appearance their eyes but these statements listed above has contradicted and proven that a person can still have strong religious beliefs, but still can take dispense that physician-assisted suicide is still an acceptable way to relieve themselves of suffering a long awaited and painful death even from their own go ds eyes. Today, death is more of an urgent issue due to an increase in medical knowledge and technology.Not all pain can be managed though. No one should have the right to force someone to face grievous pain because they think it is more moral. No one should deny anyone the right to end their own life to end their suffering because it does not seem right in their eyes. Furthermore, doctors cannot always be healers. each(prenominal) of us will come to a point in life when no medical treatment will help us, save perhaps to relieve our pain. At that point, when our condition is terminal, what we need more than anything else is intelligent mildness. (Phifer 77) Sometimes what terminal patients need is not medication to ease their physical pain, but sometimes true compassion and knowing of what they are going through. Medication for the soul to soothe their mad pain, to help them ease into death peacefully. A lot of doctors do this method acting called the double effect and religious communities support this. What the double effect is, is that it is a principle where doctors prescribe medication for pain even though they know that the level of medication will kill the patient. Even Pope antic Paul II approves of the double effect. It is licit to relieve pain by narcotics, even when the result decreased consciousness and a trim of life. (Pope John Paul II, The Gospel of Life). A lot of people ask that if physician-assisted suicide were to be made legal, that there would be an increase in suicides among disadvantaged individuals. Well according to the University of Utah, legalizing physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and the Netherlands did not result in a disproportionate number of deaths among the elderly, poor, women, minorities, uninsured, minors, chronically ill, less educated or psychiatric patients. (130) The studies showed that within the ten study groups, only the group with AIDS infected people opted for the use of physician-assisted suicide. Wherea s modern medicine has brought great benefits to humanity, it cannot entirely solve the pain and distress of the dying process. Each person deals with death in their individual way. Which way is determined by their health, their ethics, and personal living conditions. (Humphry) It just boils down to how the individual reacts to their condition. If a atient is in such unbearable pain and suffering that they want someone to end their life peacefully to relieve their pain, then so be it. No one should have to force their opinion as fact and not allow the patient to do so because of the doctors or familys belief. It all depends on what that one individual wants. It is their life, let them be in control of it. With every group that is for a cause, there is always a group against the cause as well. And when it comes to euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, things do not change.With a large support group behind these causes comes a large anti-group too. Trudy Chun and Marian Wallace a re writers for concern Women for America, a conservative, pro-family, pro-life organization. The very laws once deigned to protect a persons intrinsical right to life now permit the elimination of those deemed unworthy to live. And in the name of compassion, doctors trained to heal and to prolong life are reduce and even snuffing it out altogether. (Chun, Wallace 41) Doctors swore an oath to keep a patient lively as much and as long as possible no matter what.Killing a patient on purpose goes against everything a doctor stands for, everything a doctor was trained to do. This oath is called the Hippocratic Oath and within this oath a physician must state, I will give no deadly medicine, even when asked. Physicians are healers and the inability of physicians of preventing death does not mean a physician has the right to cause death. Diane Coleman, and executive director of progress Center for Independent Living, which is a nonprofit nonresidential serve and advocacy center oper ated by and for people with disabilities.Coleman was born with a neuromuscular disability since birth, and was given a life expectancy of twelve years. When she outlived this her diagnosis and expectancy changed as well. Within the next few years she began to take on respiratory problems and began to use a breathing machine at night. I had two other friends, one in her 20s and one in her 50s, who requisite the same thing. except their doctors discouraged them from it, reinforcing their fears, and either didnt know or didnt come upon what the medical journals said would happen as a result.At an early age they each went into respiratory distress, and died within a month from infections. (Coleman 190) Doctors today are pushing ways in which to end patients lives shorter rather than prolonging their life and treating their problems to the fullest. Seventy percent of Kevorkians terminally ill patients are said to have not even be terminally ill in the first place, nitty-gritty tha t there was still a chance in saving these individuals lives and if physicians would be allowed to kill their patients on their patients will then a treatment that could actually work may never be found.Ira Byock, director and professor of alleviative care at Dartmouth Medical School, states that palliative care should be considered alternatively of assisted suicide. Mortality teaches us a lot about life, if we let it. One thing it teaches is that human life in inherently spiritual, whether or not a person has a religion (Byock 227) What hospice is, is that it is an end-of-life option. It is meant to bring comfort, dignity, and calmness in dealing with a terminally ill patient.It brings a sense of compassion and respect for the dignity of each individual patient on how he or she deals and encounters death. Instead of prematurely ending another persons life instantaneously, It makes sure the patient lives life to the very last comfortably and lovingly. It gives the patient the pea ce of mind that he or she has been made to feel as comfortable as possible and peace of mind to their loved ones by knowing that such care is taking place. As with the pro side of physician-assisted suicide, religion plays a huge part in the anti portion. The Christian understanding of humanity insists that we are not autonomous creatures that have the right to determine when we shall live and when we shall die (Mohler 92) Christians believe that it is Gods duty to determine when a body lives and when a body dies and that if the body were to be slain prematurely at the hand of another person intentionally then that soul would be punished. Religion is an extremely important variable when it comes to suicide since suicide is seen to be sinful. Christians believe that life has meaning.That life is not just a course, but a gift. Life is all about experiences and experiences includes good things, happiness, compassion, love, but also experiencing the bad too such as pain, and suffering. In all in all religion is a very important part since most citizens in America are Christians and with the campaign to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide continues, these supporters must convince these religious conservatives in order to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted nationally.Again, with every big controversial topic, there will always be a pro side and an anti side. Each group will have their own very good points being made. But the key idea of physician-assisted suicide would not have been made as popular as it is today without the compassionate, influential, and controversial ideas of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. His compassion for pursuance out and showing the public the truth of physician-assisted suicide and the goodness it entails is enticing. The amount of court cases he had dodged and accusations he got away from is still remarkable to this day.Though he was known as Dr. Death as portrayed by the media, people who really knew Kevorkian knew that he w as a very humble, kind, and passionate old man just trying to help the unfortunate. And even though he has since passed, there are still plenty, upon plenty of people out there to make it their lifes work to make sure that Kevorkians vision of a nation that accepts physician-assisted suicide as a legal and moral practice to do on suffering terminal patients comes true.