English Assignment 8.4 (Final)

Legalizing Physician Assisted Suicide

Physician-assisted suicide is basically euthanasia performed by a physician. Euthanasia is an action of intentionally and painlessly killing so as to relieve one of suffering. Euthanasia ranges from indirect, involuntary, non-voluntary, voluntary, active and passive to assisted suicide (Merino, 2012).

The issue of euthanasia is controversial and has not been able to express both the legal and constitutional support in most parts of the world. Legislators and the legal fraternity have held a long history of establishing laws against physician assisted suicide. They have brought out the need to prevent abuse of the provision and offer protection to patients and their families from unscrupulous physicians. Legalizing this will ensure that their concerns are accounted for and at the same time the people who need this greatly will benefit (Nakaya, 2015).

A great number of people such as the terminally ill suffer a great deal in their lives of illness. Legalizing euthanasia will not only enable them access the service of being able to end their excruciating pain and suffering in their lives but also the chance for them to die with pleasant memories of friends and family around them as their time of death will be known, something that might be unlikely when the time of their death is not known. Euthanasia will also make it possible to preserve the dignity for both the patient and the family. The dependents of the patient will also be able to reserve some of the resources when the inevitable death of the patient is confirmed (Sumner, 2011).

A research in the tertiary referral Centre for oncology patients in Utrecht, the Netherlands showed results that family and friends of cancer patients who died by physician assisted suicide had less traumatic grief symptoms, less current feeling of grief and less post-traumatic reactions compared to the family and friends of patients who died of natural causes. Legalizing physician assisted suicide should thus be legalized as it has significant merits and considers welfare of patients, families as well as friends.

References

Merino, N (2012). Assisted Suicide. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.

Nakaya, A. C. (2015). Euthanasia.

Sumner, L. W. (2011). Assisted death: a study in ethics and law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.