Doctorassisted Suicide: Is It Ever an Option?
Should doctor-assisted suicide ever be a legal option? It involves the extreme measure of taking the life of a terminally ill patient when the patient is in extreme pain and the chances for recovery appear to be hopeless. Those who argue against assisted suicide do so by considering the roles of the patient, the doctor, and nature in these situations.
Should the patient take an active role in assisted suicide? When a patient is terminally ill and in great pain, those who oppose assisted suicide say that it should not be up to that patient to decide what his or her fate will be. There are greater powers at work that determine when a person dies, for example, nature. Neither science nor personal preference should take precedence over these larger forces.
What role should the doctor have? Doctors, when taking the Hippocratic oath, swear to preserve life at all costs, and it is their ethical and legal duty to follow both the spirit and the letter of this oath. It is their responsibilities to heal the sick, and in the cases when healing is not possible, then the doctor is obliged to make the dying person comfortable. Doctors are trained never to hasten death. Those who oppose assisted suicide believe that doctors who do help terminally ill patients die are committing a crime, and they should be dealt with accordingly. Doctors are also, by virtue of their humanness, capable of making mistakes. Doctors could quite possibly say, for instance, that a cancer patient was terminal, and then the illness could later turn out not to be so serious. There is always an element of doubt concerning the future outcome of human affairs.
The third perspective to consider when thinking about assisted suicide is the role of nature. Life is precious. Many people believe that it is not up to human beings to decide when to end their own or another’s life. Only nature determines when it is the right time for a person to die. To assist someone in suicide is not only to break criminal laws, but to break divine laws as well.
These general concerns of those who oppose assisted suicide are valid in certain contexts of the assisted-suicide question. For instance, patients cannot always be certain of their medical conditions. Pain clouds judgment, and so the patient should not be the sole arbiter of her or his own destiny. Patients do not usually choose the course of their medical treatment, so they shouldn’t be held completely responsible for decisions related to it. Doctors are also fallible, and it is understandable that they would not want to make the final decision about when death should occur. Since doctors are trained to prolong life, they usually do not elect to take it by prescribing assisted suicide.
I believe that blindly opposing assisted suicide does no one a service. If someone is dying of cancer and begging to be p
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