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Anjan Narain

Doctor-Assisted Suicide - 0 views

www.2facts.com/icof_story.aspx

Database- Library- Doctor-Assisted Suicide

shared by Anjan Narain on 15 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Euthanasia
  • To be acceptable to most Americans, any legislation drafted to legalize doctor-assisted suicide will clearly need to balance the desire to end suffering with the need to protect especially vulnerable patients. Timothy Quill puts forward two conditions for the future of this debate. If we legalize euthanasia, he says, we must ensure that absolutely every treatment and pain-management alternative has been tried before we allow a doctor to assist a patient to die.
  • if assisted suicide remains illegal, we must give doctors some kind of guidance in dealing with this morally and emotionally wrenching issue that presently rests entirely on their shoulders.
  • ...11 more annotations...
  • Many who oppose the legalization of doctor-assisted suicide acknowledge that the practice goes on every day--and feel that society should tolerate it, but not legalize it
  • Judge Guido Calabresi reasoned, "It may well be that a society may prefer subterfuge and covert practice to trying to draw lines that are extraordinarily difficult to draw." A similar view against legalization was expressed in a Detroit News editorial (May 18, 1995): "Sometimes families and doctors will quietly try to frustrate a ban, but society must err on the side of life by officially declaring the practice off-limits."
  • they must either openly break the law, or explicitly hide what they are doing, neither of which are comfortable options.
  • Hogan argued, "With state sanctioned and physician-assisted death at issue, some 'good results' cannot outweigh other lives lost due to unconstitutional errors and abuses."
  • The Oregon act would have been first in the U.S. to allow doctors to assist patients in dying. The law would have let doctors prescribe (but not administer) a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients who had formally requested to die.
  • The law required that the patient request to die three times, the last time in writing, and that doctors wait 15 days after receiving the final request to prescribe the lethal dose. A minimum of two physicians would have had to determine that the patient had six months or less to live.
  • patients' involvement in treatment decisions has been increased debate over doctor-assisted suicide, in which patients seek help in dying from their physician.
  • A November 1993 Louis Harris Associates poll found that a majority of Americans (58%) approve of Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a controversial retired Michigan pathologist who has made a mission of assisting terminally ill people to die
  • The issue of doctor-assisted suicide has touched off highly publicized dialogue on how to care for the terminally ill, and specifically, how to manage pain.
  • Euthanasia is defined as "the bringing about of a gentle and easy death for a person suffering from a painful incurable disease," while suicide is "the intentional killing of oneself.
  • active euthanasia, which is at the center of the current controversy. Passive euthanasia is defined as "allowing to die," and is used to describe a decision to withhold treatment, or remove life support, from a patient who may be in a coma or vegetative state.
  • Anjan Narain on 15 Nov 10
     
    "Euthanasia"
Anjan Narain

Essay on Euthanasia in America - 0 views

www.echeat.com/essay.php

Essay on Euthanasia in the US

shared by Anjan Narain on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • Euthanasia is a choice everyone should have, but like all rights, it should not be taken advantage of. By legalizing euthanasia the practice of assisted suicide would be an available choice as well as regulated to see that it does not get abused and used for the wrong reasons.
  • My four primary arguments for legalizing euthanasia are as follows: The mercy argument, which states that the immense pain and indignity of prolonged suffering, cannot be ignored. We are being inhumane to force people to continue suffering this way. The patients right to self-determination.
  • The reality argument. "Let's face it people are already doing it".
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  • Some terminally ill patients who have been denied assistance in dying, have attempted to terminate they're suffering by ending their lives themselves or with the help of loved ones, who are not trained in medicine. Some patients have botched their suicides and brought further suffering to themselves and those around them. Patients should not have to resort to suicide to end their suffering. It is their life, their pain. They should be able to get the treatment they want.
  • " if we so choose, the end of life need not be preceded by intolerable pain, or by senility and loss of bodily functions.” Death with dignity is the right of every person who faces an incurable, painful or degrading future.
  • Caring for terminally ill patients requires a vast amount of money. In 1997, shortly after the senate voted to overturn the Northern Territory's euthanasia law, doctors from both sides of the euthanasia lobby united in calling for more funds for palliative care. There is a requirement for several hundred million dollars extra to really adequately provide for the needs of the dying, particularly in country areas.
  • Why does the government choose to outlaw euthanasia when it is done anyway? Legalizing it would mean that patients would be able to consult doctors, and not resort to taking it into their own hands, making it safer and better. There would be no need for suicide attempts; consequently there would be less tragedies
  • Passive euthanasia is defined as allowing a patient to die by withholding treatment, while active euthanasia is defined as taking measures that directly cause a patient's death
  • Those who argue against active euthanasia understand that there is a demand for active euthanasia as a response "to the fear of entrapment in a technologically sophisticated, seemingly uncaring world of medicine
  • offers several arguments in favor of the moral permissibility of active euthanasia, one of which is an argument from mercy. He begins by describing a classic case where a person named Jack is terminally ill and in unbearable pain and states that Jack's condition alone is a compelling reason for the permissibility of active mercy killing.
  • active euthanasia is morally permissible since it produces the greatest happiness
  • . The categorical imperative supports active euthanasia since no one would willfully universalize a rule, which condemns people to unbearable pain before death. It is also reasoned that it is considered bad to be the cause of someone's death and that death is regarded as a great evil. However, if it has been decided that active or passive euthanasia is desirable in a given case, it has also been decided that in this instance death is no greater an evil than the patient's continued existence
  • A good point is raised here, because death is supposedly inevitable in either case, so according to Rachel, if a doctor allows a patient to die or gives him a lethal injection, then the motives and ends are essentially the same.
  • In conclusion, denying patients the right to die with dignity and lucidity is unfair and cruel. If physician assisted suicide means giving a patient the right to choose between a life without dignity and hope, or ending their pain and suffering with an honorable closure on life, than it should be permitted.
  • When a patient has no desire to go on living and wants to die before their condition gets worse, they should be allowed to decide how their life ends and why. Assisted suicide is known to have been going on without fanfare and without legal support for many years. It is time to give physician-assisted suicide the legal justification that it deserves.
Anjan Narain

Before I Die: Opinions - 0 views

www.thirteen.org/...vp-assisted.html

shared by Anjan Narain on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • The two most common reasons that lead people to think about or to commit suicide, whether they are terminally ill or not, are untreated pain or depression
  • should be a lawful medical procedure for competent, terminally ill adults, because it is a compassionate response to relieve the suffering of dying patients.
  • physicians are not trained to offer adequate treatment for pain or depression
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  • But good medical care can give patients relief from pain and control over their medical destiny without creating the severe risks posed by assisted suicide.
  • In a workable system, the option of physician-assisted suicide would arise only after all treatment options are exhausted, the best of hospice and palliative care has failed to relieve unbearable suffering
  • Legalizing assisted suicide would be profoundly dangerous. The risks would extend to all who are ill, but would be greatest for patients who lack access to high quality medical care.
  • Then, with outside opinion concurring, a physician would be permitted to prescribe medication that the patient could use to hasten death at a time of the patient's choice.
  • who are not ill-intentioned but hurried or insensitive;
  • Patient and family anxiety about future suffering and death would be reduced; care and comfort at the end of life would be improved.
  • A request for suicide is often a plea for help. How many doctors know their patients well enough to hear that plea
  • we must commit ourselves to caring better for patients at life's end.
  • A more rational law than the current ban on assisting a terminally ill patient who requests help in dying will extend the length of lives of those who are dying by preventing the suicide of those who will benefit from relieved suffering.
Anjan Narain

A national survey of physician-assisted suicide an... [N Engl J Med. 1998] - PubMed result - 0 views

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...9554861

Statistics

shared by Anjan Narain on 14 Nov 10 - Cached
  • Although there have been many studies of physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia in the United States, national data are lacking.
  • we mailed questionnaires to a stratified probability sample of 3102 physicians in the 10 specialties in which doctors are most likely to receive requests from patients for assistance with suicide or euthanasia
  • 1902 completed questionnaires (response rate, 61 percent). Eleven percent of the physicians said that under current legal constraints, there were circumstances in which they would be willing to hasten a patient's death by prescribing medication, and 7 percent said that they would provide a lethal injection; 36 percent and 24 percent, respectively, said that they would do so if it were lega
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  • A substantial proportion of physicians in the United States report that they receive requests for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia, and about 7 percent of those who responded to our survey have complied with such requests at least once.
Shumona Raha

Euthanasia- Is mercy killing justified? - 0 views

hubpages.com/...ia--Is-mercy-killing-justified

euthanasia mercy killing

shared by Shumona Raha on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • On June 14 2005 , the newspaper headlines sprang the news that the central Government in India was mulling over the idea of legalising euthanasia
  • There are many religious and humanistic societies which protest against this mercy killing.
  • That can be done by a drug overdose, a lethal injection, or the withdrawal of medical support.
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  • Voluntary euthanasia is when the person who is killed requests to be killed. On the other hand, non voluntary euthanasia is when a person made no request and gave no consent.
  • When it is a doctor who helps another person to kill themselves it is called "physician assisted suicide."
  • Why keep a burden around? All you are doing is justifying your self seeking nature by getting rid of a problem.
  • Supporters of euthanasia argue that "mercy-killing" is necessary because patients, particularly those with terminal illness, experience uncontrollable pain. They argue that the only way to alleviate the pain is to eliminate the patient. What else can we do? They ask.
  • The medical expenses are so high when lifesaving medicines from good companies cost the earth.
  • In the west, nobody bothers much about old people because they are bundled up into old people's homes whenever the children think them a burden, physical, emotional and financial. But in India, grandparents are still a power in the house and the family.
  • Remember that the old and elderly are a valuable fabric of the Indian society
  • A terminally ill patient is suffering physically. But he's also suffering from mental and social pain. The social pain is that he is a financial burden upon his family. His children have to take time off their busy lives to take him to the doctor. Sometimes patients are reluctant to report that they are feeling any pain, because it will be a trouble to their family members.
Anjan Narain

Euthanasia and the Law in the United States of America - 0 views

www.exitinternational.net/...USA

The Law

shared by Anjan Narain on 14 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • The US has a spotted history of law reform on voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted dying
  • Oregon was the first state to pass a Death With Dignity (DWD) Act which it did in 1994 after a Citizen Initiated Referendum.  However, this law was not finally implemented until 27 October 1997
  • allow people who are terminally and/or hopelessly ill to ask their doctors for lethal medication. Patients must make two verbal requests and one written request that is fully witnessed. Two doctors must agree on the patient’s ‘diagnosis, prognosis and the patient's capability’.
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  • The Oregon and Washington laws explicitly prohibit euthanasia, which is defined as involving someone other than the patient administering the medication
Shumona Raha

Euthanasia - Described and Debated - 0 views

www.hoshuha.com/...euthanasia.html

euthanasia debate pain

shared by Shumona Raha on 11 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • active and passive
  • the elimination of the old, weak, and disabled.
  • People who are "not useful" could be exterminated simply for that reason
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • request death for the sick because of questionable reasons. Someone might only be thinking of their own gain, knowing that they are mentioned in a will.
  • Many believe that "only God can give life and only God should take it away" (Cundiff, 64). There is also the question to consider of the fallibility of physicians. Many lives could be ended too hastily as a result of incorrect prognosis or diagnosis.
  • While the pain should be treated (for example, with painkillers), the person should not be forced to live through methods like life-support,
  • In most cases, people who request assisted suicide or euthanasia are actually crying for help
  • Euthanasia could easily become a way to minimize health care costs.
  • physicians are being offered cash bonuses if they fail to provide care for their patients. Doctors could face financial risks for actually doing their jobs.
  • Medical care is something that must be provided. We cannot walk out on people who are suffering
  • No person is entitled to consent to have death inflicted on him, and such consent does not affect the criminal responsibility of any person by whom death may be inflicted on the person by whom consent is given.
  • it is called passive
  • "the government [does] not have the right to [allow] one group of people . . . to kill another group of people"
  • The government also does not intend to make anyone suffer
  • The allowance of euthanasia would open up doors of undesirable practices.
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