Death System Failure

Imagine the tragedy you had brain cancer with tumors coming left and right in your head causing untreatable headaches, or imagine you had terminal lung cancer where you are gasping for air and feel as if your chest is caving in, or what about stomach cancer in which you are unable to take a bite of food without vomiting uncontrollably…well these things are undeniable awful, but what if someone were to make you live each day of life this way? How bad would that be? Well this is something people in America go through each and every day.

At the age of twenty-nine, Brittany Maynard was diagnosed with Glioblastoma Mulitiforme, the most aggressive and lethal form of brain cancer (Griffin, 2014). She was given only six months to live and did not want to die in pain, but rather to die with dignity. She made the decision to exercise her “right to die” and chose to move to one of the five states that allows terminally ill patients the right to die with dignity. She moved from California to Oregon as Oregon is a state that has the “right to die” legislation (Griffin, 2014). She and her family had made it clear that during all this madness, it was reassuring to know that she would not have to suffer. The fact that only five of the fifty states in America has this legislation clearly proves that the social construction of death is not

Physician-assisted suicide is when a doctor provides the means and the information necessary for a patient to end his life. A bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide was recently signed into law in California, and four other states have also legalized physician-assisted suicide. While many people may say that physician-assisted suicide should not be legal, the fact of the matter is that assisted suicide is a way to end a terminally ill patient’s suffering, and therefore should be legal.

A hot topic in today’s media and in discussion is the idea of physician assisted suicide and end of life care. There are several legal, ethical, social, and political issues surrounding this idea, which makes it a controversial topic. This paper will discuss some of these issues and explore the idea of physician assisted suicide and end of life care in more detail.

It brought to my awareness both the limitation and the capacity of medicine. Although there was no medical intervention that could cure the diseases of those terminal patients, their quality of life was improved  by an outstanding team of doctors, nurses and volunteers. This awareness helped reconcile myself to the fact that certain things, such as death and terminal illness, can not be avoided or changed. By viewing death as a natural part of life, I will be able to offer my dying patients the best care possible while also understanding my limitation as a physician and a human being.

Currently in the United States only five out of the fifty states have legalized assisted suicide. Assisted suicide is the help from a physician for a patient to end their life because they have a terminal illness. Many people believe that euthanasia should be illegal across the board, however, people who have terminal illnesses should have a right to be in charge of how to end their life. Many people do not want their family to see them at their lowest, and they do not want to see their selves at their lowest either, therefore, giving a person a right to end their life peacefully, should be an individual’s choice.

“A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.” -Andrew Coyne. According to Cambridge dictionary, euthanasia, also called assisted suicide, is the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering. Although many think assisted suicide should be legalized in Canada to avoid violation of Freedom of Choice Act, I strongly disagree with its legalization. Permitting euthanasia prevents advancements in care facilities for the terminally-ill, leads to non-voluntary use of euthanasia and diminishes society’s respect for life.

The Death with Dignity Act has two arguments: those who believe we have the right to choose how and when we die, and those who believe we do not possess that right; that we should not interfere with the natural order of life. Every year, people across America are diagnosed with a terminal illness. For some people there is time: time to hope for a cure, time to fight the disease, time to pray for a miracle. For others however, there is very little or no time. For these patients, their death is rapidly approaching and for the vast majority of them, it will be a slow and agonizing experience. However, there is hope of a peaceful death for these patients that exists in a controversial law being considered by many states throughout the country. It is known as the Death with Dignity Act. This law gives terminally ill patients the option of ending their own life in a painless manner at a time and place of their choosing by

It is nearly impossible for the patient to rely on another person to make the best decision that they would have made for themselves, particularly when it involves personal interests such as profiting from a will. If there is something to gain, the family members’ motives seem questionable. If the patient falls ill, then there lies a possibility that their heirs will hope for the patient’s death so that they could receive their inheritance. The inability to confirm whether the family actually has the patient’s best interest in mind supports the argument that any form of euthanasia is unethical. Moreover, health care costs for terminally ill patients, including nursing homes, prescription drugs, and home health care deserves consideration. Some families can not afford to drop everything in order to take on the full time responsibility of their sick loved one. This adds financial stress to the family and can lead to the desire to resolve the issue by forcing the idea of euthanasia on to the loved one. According to Time.com, one in every four Medicare dollars spent goes to the five percent of beneficiaries in the last year of their life. The result of this is often an overwhelming debt for the families of terminally ill patients, with the care of a single patient costing approximately $39,000 exceeding the financial assets for many households. When the patient is uninsured or denied coverage from an insurance company, the family inherits the costs. In cases like these, legalizing euthanasia would present it as a viable solution, and in their distress, the family members may selfishly consider it to alleviate the financial burden the patient may

Life is never guaranteed and whether it is through an illness or an accident, we as humans are eventually going to die. Physicians Assisted suicide is one of the most controversial issues. The issue of doctor-assisted suicide has been the subject of the heated dispute in recent years. While some oppose the idea that a physician should aid in ending a life, others believe that physicians should be permitted in helping a patient to end his or her unbearable suffering when faced with a terminal illness. Furthermore, Physician-assisted suicide should be legal; it should be the patient’s right to decide when and how he or she should die.

The argument that I am analyzing is found in Philippa Foot’s article Euthanasia. This specific section starts at the beginning on page 88. This argument starts once she talks about the true meaning of Euthanasia and the difficulty in how people see or perceive it. In Foot 's article, she wants to prove that an act of euthanasia is morally permissible, as long as you’re performing it for the right cause or reasons. Foot defines euthanasia as "a matter of opting for death for the good of the one who is to die." (Foot, p.100) She further justifies this argument by stating that as long as we put into consideration the interests of the person involved and only the benefits of that person that euthanasia can morally acknowledge. I believe that it

The Right to Die has been taking effect in many states and is rapidly spreading around the world. Patients who have life threatening conditions usually choose to die quickly with the help of their physicians. Many people question this right because of its inhumane authority. Euthanasia or assisted suicide are done by physicians to end the lives of their patients only in Oregon, Washington, Vermont, Montana, New Mexico and soon California that have the Right to Die so that patients don’t have to live with depression, cancer and immobility would rather die quick in peace.

Who chooses death over life? Sometimes we have to make this decision over a loved one when there is no hope for their recovery. It would be incredibly hard to make this life or death decision on another human being and twice as hard when it is someone we love. The author discusses the argument of this controversial topic of sustaining life at any cost or dying peacefully as an ethical issue. An ethicist, a person who specializes in or writes on ethics, can provide valuable discernment with respect to right and wrong motives or actions. Involving a medically trained ethicist to provide family members with some guidance on this very difficult decision can be helpful. In the article, “When living is a Fate Worse than Death”, Christine Mitchell describes a sympathetic, emotional look into the life and death of a family’s little girl.

The word “euthanize” means to bring about a person’s death to relieve them from serious distress. The topic of euthanasia in medicine has evolved since intensive care was first instituted. Before the 1950’s, a simple model was used to determine when someone was dead: the individual was dead when his or her heart stopped beating. In the modern light, the answer to this question isn’t as clear. With advancements in organ transplantation and other medical technologies, the stopping of a beating heart is no longer a definite death sentence. This prolonging of life brings about many ethical dilemmas in the field of medicine. One of the issues is patient autonomy. The practice of euthanasia has been established to put the choice back into the hands of the patient. To better understand euthanasia, there are five different types.

The act of euthanasia, whether active or passive, is heavily obstructed in the medical field. Through medical ethics, the act of passive euthanasia is condoned by withholding treatment and thus, allowing the patient to die. Without any direct contact with the patient, the doctor is not considered as the cause of death. Thus, the medical field views passive euthanasia as of lesser and more permissible value in comparison to active euthanasia. In the statement made by the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association, they perceive this as contrary to mercy killing, as it is,