Assisted Suicides

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Assisted Suicide

Just how far should you go when being told to live life to the fullest? Are the choices you have in life up to you? Medical hospitals around the world are turning around in circles trying to define the thin line between the rights of a doctor and the rights of the patient. The question is whether or not “assisted suicide” should be an option available to the patient has in a time of great pain and agony. Should someone who possesses unbearable pain and who may be in the wrong state of mind at the time that could not affect not only his own life, but also the life of others? Although arguments exist to support the advantages of assisted suicides, over powering evidence shows that it may be in the best interest of the patients and others to not allow this.
The controversial and difficult issue of assisted suicide or euthanasia has been brought to people’s attention by the very powerful and competitive views of which it expresses. Most people, more that 1/3, spend at least 10 days in intensive care units, where they often endure torturous attempts at a cure. A survey published in the may issue of the Journal of General Internal Medicine, was the first nationwide examination of all doctors’ views on physician assisted suicide. This survey found that 61.6% of AMA, American Medical Association, and delegates said they are for Physician assisted suicide. If the law would allow doctors to prescribe narcotics for the relief of pain, even if drugs have the side effect of shortening a patient’s life, then doctors would be able to prescribe a level of medication, that

could reduce their patients’ agony. In a recent magazine article in the New York Times it states:
At age 91, Bertha Hyman signed a “living will,” outlining her wishes of no resuscitation, no respirator, and no tangle of tubes. Later she informed two nieces and gave one of them power to an attorney to make decisions for her if she cou...