For or against doctor assisted suicide. Health Medicine Essay

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Persuasive Essay against Doctor-Assisted Suicide
Doctor-assisted suicide refers to voluntary deaths that occur with the help of a physician. The physician deliberately provides the patient with the mechanisms needed to commit suicide (Ababneh, 2). These include counseling the person regarding lethal drugs, supplying the drugs, and prescribing them to the person who chooses to die (Radbruch, 104). In most cases, this concept applies to terminally-ill patients who wish to die because they cannot bear the pain anymore. On such occasions, the patient may ask the doctor to prescribe lethal drugs or remove life-supporting machines to allow them to die in dignity. Whether or not physician-assisted suicide is an individual decision that has raised controversies from legal and ethical points of view. In some countries, the practice is authorized, while in others, physician-assisted death is prohibited. Some countries allow it on one condition: - If a patient is terminally ill with a life expectancy of not more than six months (Satz 1386). Such people can request physicians to help them terminate their lives to stop pain and suffering. However, from legal and ethical perspectives, doctor-assisted death is not justifiable because assisting patients to end their lives is against the principles of nursing ethics. Similarly, no human being has a legal obligation to take another person's life. In other words, physician-assisted suicide is a violation of the human right to life.
From an ethical viewpoint, physician-assisted suicide is morally wrong. Morality primarily concerns how the decision of a person bears the intrinsic values of others. Such values include health, life, friendship, and knowledge. People need to care for others and help them attain these intrinsic values (Dugdale, Lerner, and Callahan, 747). Acting directly against these values is equivalent to moving against the person. In this respect, human life is identical to oneself. As such, a decision to kill a human being is contrary to the love and appreciation of the individual (Satz, 1386). Assisted suicide is morally wrong because it contradicts the intrinsic good of an innocent person.
Doctors who assist patients terminate their lives go against the Hippocratic Oath they take in medical school. In this Oath, the physicians promise to relieve patients from pain and not administer any lethal drug (Satz, 1387). Helping patients commit suicide is like breaking this Oath. After all, doctors have the sole responsibility of doing everything they could to resuscitate the patient. For that reason, physician-assisted suicide is an unethical practice that makes the doctors be accomplices of murder. It makes them fail to uphold their promise of relieving pain and suffering in patients.
Another ethical stance is based on the principals of nursing ethics, such as beneficence and nonmaleficence. Beneficence states that nurses should always do good. Taking part in assisted suicide violates the healthcare policy that requires nurses to do everything they can to save the patient (Ababneh, 3). Nonmaleficence is a commitment not to cause harm to the patient. Arguably, physician-assisted suicide indirectly causes harm ...