Euthansia

By: Caroline If someone has a disease, or some form of illness that they won't be able to recover from and will die from, should that person be able to end their life with a doctor's assistance? This is a dilemma that has been discussed many times, but an official answer has never been decided on because there are many positive and negative things about it. Assisted suicide being legal or illegal could change large amounts of medical issues in America, but will a decision be made?

I believe that if someone is going to die from a disease, they can't be helped, and they're in a considerable amount of pain, a doctor should be allowed to give them a lethal does of a drug to kill them, if that's what the patient desires. People will bring up the point, that a doctor giving a patient a lethal does of a drug would be violating their Hippocratic oath.

On the other hand, since doctors take the Hippocratic oath, that doesn't mean that there is no way for the doctor to take part in a assisted suicide with one of their patients. The Hippocratic oath can be legally changed to allow assisted suicide. Also, in the past, doctors have done assisted suicide and not been convicted of murder. So why would it be now? Plus assisted suicide is one of the same solutions as what doctors do today. If someone is in a coma, and they won't wake up, doctors can confiscate them from their a breather and feeding tubes. And, isn't a doctor keeping a patient in pain harming them more than stopping their pain?

To add to that, if the patient's disease causes them to suffer more than what should be allowed, they should be able to determine if they want to make the end sooner or not. The despair a person can go through during a disease is unimaginable to anyone who has never experienced it. So why should someone else get to determine what to do about it? What's the point in maximizing someone's pain if they're simply going to die anyway? On top of that, the sick individual will have emotional pain from being kept alive with machines if that's the case. And, the patient will accomplish nothing and not get better from being kept alive.

As for another fact, letting patients with hopeless conditions pass will save hospitals room and resources. Supplies will stop being wasted on people that won't benefit from it and might not even want it. Saving medical treatment for patients that can get better from them is much wiser than forcing someone to take them, and they won't heal from them. Consider what would happen if there were less patients that won't recover from their affliction taking up space in hospitals, there would be more room for people who can be helped. Lives could be liberated if there was room in hospitals and the treatment sick people need available. So assisted suicide wouldn't be just letting people die, it would be letting other people live and recover from a treatable illness that they have.

Don't you agree that people should have "the right to die"? Everyone should have the choice to end their life if they are in agony, and they're going to expire soon anyway. It's one of the most important choices someone will ever make and they should be able to choose what it will be. Ignoring someone's wishes to have an easy, peaceful death is removing their right to choose the way their death should be. Doctor's jobs are to heal people. Once they can't do that, they don't have any right to keep a patient alive and lengthen their pain against their will. So, an ailing person shouldn't be able to choose to die if there is hope, but, if there isn't, they should be able to.

In addition, people should be able to die with dignity, if that's what they long for. Diseases can cripple people to a point where they can't breath on their own. They can additionally be reduced to a fraction of what they were before. For most people, this is very humiliating, and not how they want to live their last moments and be remembered. Everyone should be able to bypass this fate. Doctors shouldn't be able to force patients to waste away until there's nothing left. Almost everyone wishes to die proud and at least some-what strong. No one should be able to attain that from them. Dying is the last feeling a person experiences, and they should be able to do it they way the want to, within reason.

And finally, people who have seen a loved one die of a disease, almost all agree that assisted suicide is a better option than that person being forced to stay alive. The people who decided on this, are people that witnessed their loved ones die. They wouldn't lie about their opinion. They didn't yearn for that person to die in the first place, but after experiencing someone close to them dying, they know that assisted suicide is a more appropriate option. On top of that, their belief on assisted suicide has to be the most accurate anyone can get because they were there for someone dying first hand. They know what they're talking about. If they're not right about if assisted suicide should be legal, who is?

As you can see, the answer to many of America's medical problems is to let assisted suicide be legal. We just have to make it known, and you can help. We can make people's death a less mournful event, and help people recover after a loved one dies, because they know that they left peaceful and comfortable. You just have to lend a caring hand.

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"Voluntary euthanasia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." //Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia//. Wikipedia, 31 Mar. 2010. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. .

Young, Robert. "Voluntary Euthanasia (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)." //Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy//. Stanford University, 18 Apr. 1996. Web. 31 Mar. 2010. .