The Dying Process
Uploaded by tinc on Sep 12, 2015
Tia Kristinsson
HM 2015
November 21
The Dying Process
Terminally ill patients fear and the process of gaining control by means of physician-assisted suicide. Should physicians have the legal authority to assist a terminally ill patient in ending their suffering? Perhaps the question is not one of agreeing about the ethics of end-of-life decisions, but that of provoking an ethical case for legalizing that practices. The “Right to Die” for terminally ill patients where death is inevitable, euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should be a legal option. People have a constitutional right to live; thus, people should have a right to die.
Euthanasia is divided into two categories:
1. Active Euthanasia: is a type of euthanasia in which an individual who suffers and has no chance of recovery is induced to death. It has also been regarded as mercy killing. A physician performs active euthanasia and carries out the final-death causing act. Active euthanasia is completely voluntary. A patient gives full consent over the medical procedure.
2. Passive Euthanasia: is the cessation of life by deliberately withholding drugs and other life-sustaining treatments. Hastening the death of an individual by altering some form of support and allowing death to take its course. This could include allowing a patient to starve to death, turning off respirators, or not resuscitating them. Passive euthanasia includes administering large doses of morphine to aid and control pain.
3. Physician-Assisted Suicide: A physician-assisted suicide (PAS), also known as voluntary passive euthanasia, a physician supplies information and the means of committing suicide (i.e. a lethal dose of medication or carbon monoxide gas) to the individual so that they can successfully end their own life.
I feel the fundamental key in this argument is that if a terminally ill patient wants to end his or her own life before the disease stripes away at their quality of life, then the patient should have the option of euthanasia. The patient is in fact terminally ill, has been fully educated in all aspects of their disease i.e. physical, psychological, the options available for care, and the process of dying, and are of sound mind then the choice is theirs’. Allowing maintenance of autonomy and self-respect throughout the course of illness are imperative. If it is so important for everyone to respect each other’s cultural diversities then why is not the same from the others? Whose life is it anyways?