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Anjan Narain

Doctor-Assisted Suicide - 0 views

www.2facts.com/icof_story.aspx

Database- Library- Doctor-Assisted Suicide

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  • 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.
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  • 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

Euthanasia Pros and Cons - 0 views

www.euthanasia.com/proscons.html

Pros and Cons

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  • It provides a way to relieve extreme pain It provides a way of relief when a person's quality of life is low Frees up medical funds to help other people It is another case of freedom of choic
  • The intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit.
  • Euthanasia can become a means of health care cost containment Physicians and other medical care people should not be involved in directly causing death
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  • Euthanasia devalues human life
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

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  • 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.
Anjan Narain

Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: All sides to the issue - 0 views

www.religioustolerance.org/euthanas.htm

Physician Assisted Suicide quotes

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  • Throughout North America, committing suicide or attempting to commit suicide is no longer a criminal offense. However, helping another person commit suicide is generally considered a criminal act.
  • Oregon which, since 1997, has allowed people who are terminally ill, in intractable pain, and not depressed to obtain a lethal prescription from their physician and end their chronic suffering. This is called "Physician Assisted Suicide" or PAS.
  • Washington voters passed Initiative 1000 in 2008-NOV. Supporters call it a "Death with Dignity bill;" opponents call it an "Assisted Suicide" measure. Both are accurate descriptions.   Montana's Montana Supreme Court legalized PAS in a decision handed down on 2009-DEC-31.
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  • "The right to a good death is a basic human freedom. The Supreme Court's decision to uphold aid in dying allows us to view and act on death as a dignified moral and godly choice for those suffering with terminal illnesses."
Anjan Narain

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

www.exitinternational.net/...USA

The Law

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  • 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
Anjan Narain

Essay on Euthanasia in America - 0 views

www.echeat.com/essay.php

Essay on Euthanasia in the US

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  • 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

Euthanasia in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - 2 views

en.wikipedia.org/...uthanasia_in_the_United_States

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  • Euthanasia is illegal in all states of the United States. Physician aid-in-dying (PAD) is legal in the states of Washington, Oregon, and Montana. The key difference between euthanasia and PAD is who administers the lethal dose of medication.
  • Animal · Child · Voluntary Non-voluntary · Involuntary
  • the legal rights of patients, or their guardians, to practice at least voluntary passive euthanasia (physician assisted death). These include the Karen Ann Quinlan (1976), Brophy and Nancy Cruzan cases. More recent years have seen policies fine-tuned and re-stated, as with Washington v. Glucksberg (1997) and the Terri Schiavo case.
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  • District Court judge Dorothy McCarter ruled in favor of a terminally ill Billings resident who had filed a lawsuit with the assistance of Compassion & Choices, a patient rights group. The ruling states that competent, terminally ill patients have the right to self-administer lethal doses of medication as prescribed by a physician. Physicians who prescribe such medications will not face legal punishment
  • Ballot Measure 16 in 1994 established the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which legalizes physician-assisted dying with certain restrictions
  • Texas hospitals and physicians have the right to withdraw life support measures, such as mechanical respiration, from terminally ill patients when such treatment is considered to be both futile and inappropriate.
  • In 2008, assisted suicide in the state of Washington was made legal by Initiative 1000.
  • A 2002 Gallup survey showed that 72% of Americans supported euthanasia
  • Recent studies have shown European-Americans to be more accepting of euthanasia than African-Americans, though this difference may be explained by other factors. They are also more likely to have advance directives and to use other end-of-life measures.[8] African-Americans are almost 3 times more likely to oppose euthanasia than European-Americans. The main reason for this discrepancy is attributed to the lower levels of trust in the medical establishment
  • Attempts to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide resulted in ballot initiatives and legislation bills within the United States in the last 20 years.
Anjan Narain

Before I Die: Opinions - 0 views

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

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  • 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

Is physician-assisted suicide legal? - 1 views

www.growthhouse.org/...mort2523.html

The book- Handbook for Mortals

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  • Physician-assisted suicide is illegal in every state except Oregon.
  • the Court reaffirmed that Americans do have the right to refuse or end life-sustaining treatment, such as ventilators and feeding tubes.
  • Is physician-assisted suicide legal
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  • The Court pointed out that there is a difference between letting someone die and helping someone to die. Refusing treatment lets your disease run its natural course. Having someone’s help in suicide, the court ruled, is different.
  • The Court also emphasized the importance of pain control for dying people. The court’s ruling may well have created a right to pain and symptom management — at least keeping the states from erecting barriers.
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