Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia
Introduction
Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia involves having a physician assist a patient to terminate his or her life. The physician may accomplish this through several means all of which are passive. Some of these include giving the patient information that may aid the patient in meeting death, prescribing medication that is lethal or any other device that may help the patient in dying. When a patient is near end of life, they may choose to hasten their death and to do so, they may request the physician to aid through the means mentioned above but more so by having the doctor prescribe the lethal dose of medication. It is important to note here that the physician does not actively administer the lethal medication but his work is to just prescribe while the patient administers the dose themselves (Zanskas Coduti, 2006).
With so much controversy revolving around autonomy, the question of dying finds a central place. The way individuals meet their death is obviously meant to provoke a controversial debate when a second party is involved as it becomes hard to differentiate what is murder and what is not. Such is the case when it comes to euthanasia and physician assisted suicide for the elderly people. Euthanasia has had a dark past where it has been maliciously employed to get rid of a section of people in the society such as it occurred in the Nazi genocide in Germany. Physician assisted suicide or euthanasia to the elderly or any other section of the society is thus painted as crime and the situation becomes even more confusing when moral and ethical views are introduced. This essay seeks to state that physician assisted suicide or euthanasia in the elderly is not only murder but it is also malicious since life occurs naturally and it should thus be taken away from any individual naturally (Lee, 2003).
Arguments against physician assisted suicide or euthanasia
Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia in elderly people has elicited much criticism and opposition due to legal, ethical and religious reasons. It is perceived by many as a violation of medical ethics particularly the Hippocratic Oath. The oath prohibits physicians from giving patients lethal medications thus terminating an individuals life. It therefore implies that, physician assisted suicide is a way of compromising the ethics that have established medicine. By giving physicians the right to prescribe the lethal dose to the elderly people in the society, it is not only argued to be equivalent of murdering such individuals, but it is actually murdering them. Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia is seen to contravene most religious beliefs such as Christianity, Islamic, Buddhism and Hinduism which all adore that life emanates from God and thus it should only be taken away by God. Physicians as well as the elderly people are therefore viewed to take up Gods role of determining life or death by having physician assisted suicide and euthanasia. Morally, Physician assisted suicide or euthanasia has been viewed by many people and health organizations as morally unacceptable (Miller, 2002).
There are those who are of the view that with physician assisted suicide and euthanasia in the elderly, the relationship between the physician who is the perpetrator of the crime and the elderly individuals who are the victims is violated and hence erodes the trust thereof. It is the responsibility of the physician to keep life and try to assist the elderly individuals to live for a much longer period of time, instead of using his or her knowledge and experience in murdering people through some legitimized means. A doctor should therefore be as beneficent to the elderly people as possible. Moreover, there are fears that physician assisted suicide and euthanasia can be uncontainable if misused by people in the society. Some people would simply go for physician assisted suicide or euthanasia when they suffer from depression which is a condition that can be reversed. On the same note, some caregivers are likely to make such decisions as physician assisted suicide or euthanasia for their incompetent patients. This abuse would also extend to persons with disabilities and other minorities within the society. Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia is likely to be used maliciously to get rid of persons who may be deemed inconvenient (Manetta Wells, 2001).
Controversies regarding physician assisted suicide do not only arise around religious circles but also within the health profession itself. Some clinicians will view this practice as unacceptable whereas others will view it otherwise. Among the organizations that have regarded physician assisted suicide or euthanasia as morally unacceptable include The American Osteopathic Association, American Medical Association as well as the American Geriatrics Society. The issue becomes more of a dilemma to physicians and nurses when it is legally unacceptable. A request for physician assisted suicide or euthanasia is likely to leave the physicians feeling that they have failed to take control of the elderly peoples situation and they may end up feeling guilty. Shock and anxiety are also likely feelings to be encountered by other health care providers such as nurses. Confusion also prevails with these professionals being torn between heeding to the old peoples call and abiding to their professional codes of conduct (McKenzie, 2004).
Even in jurisdictions where physician assisted suicide have been legalized, clinicians have still found themselves torn between their ethical values and patient autonomy. Such an ethical dilemma as whether to have physician assisted death can only be resolved by use of a structured model. In this particular issue, beneficence as an ethical decision making model can be very useful in ensuring that the dying patient receives the best of care and that no conflicts exist between any of the three players i.e. the patient, physician and caregiver (Miller, 2002).
In most cases, the elderly people are less concerned about the events that are taking place around them. They therefore do not have the capacity of either accepting physician assisted suicide and euthanasia or not. It is thus possible for them to accept their lives to be terminated, while in the real sense they never meant it. By administering to them lethal doses and thus terminating their lives prematurely would give the implication that the physicians and indeed the whole society is taking advantage of the helplessness nature of these individuals to murder them without their consent since people without the capacity of accepting such an action also cannot be said to consent to it. Furthermore, the elderly people have lived for quite a long period of time in their respective societies and they have made several contributions to it. If the same society turns against them and murders them simply because they can no longer make any more contributions to it, the society can only be said to be immoral, unethical and unthankful. It would also imply to the much younger generation that there is no need of making any meaningful contributions to the society since when they will become old, the same society will unjustly get rid of them when they are no longer useful to it (Zanskas Coduti, 2006).
Arguments for physician assisted suicide or euthanasia
A look into the reasons why the elderly people and caregivers will request for physician assisted suicide and euthanasia indicates that most will choose to terminate their lives to alleviate unbearable pain they are going through as well as a sense of hopelessness. Most of the elderly people suffer from various terminal illnesses which cause severe pain to them and they have limited financial resources to seek proper medical care. They are also faced by the challenge of having committed people to take care for them since they need a lot of assistance. With this in mind, it would only be good to offer such elderly individuals an opportunity to be relieved off the pain through physician assisted suicide. They die with dignity and are well conscious of their actions and decisions. In other words, the elderly people choose a shorter way out of suffering and physicians offer physician assisted suicide or euthanasia as a sign of mercy. Reports on why elderly people who are also terminally ill usually choose physician assisted suicide and euthanasia indicates that most of them had gone through pain for years and have lost ability to function. They therefore prefer physician assisted suicide or euthanasia to evade more suffering as no hope for recovery existed (Lee, 2003).
Physician assisted suicide and euthanasia has been viewed by proponents as a good way of respecting patients autonomy. Autonomy requires that the individual who will have his life terminated make his own decision regarding choice of care given and the physician must respect this. Even when the patient is not in a position to make such a decision, he or she can appoint a surrogate decision maker. Physician assisted suicide is therefore a respect for the elderly individuals autonomy. Autonomy complements mercy whereby the elderly person as a human being is free to live his or her own life as they may deem it fit to them whereas mercy is a call to remove all types of pain and suffering from such people. Giving these two rigs to the patient through physician assisted suicide and euthanasia should be the aim of the physician and the society at large (McKenzie, 2004).
Not only does physician assisted suicide and euthanasia do away with suffering in the elderly people, but it also relieves caregivers off the burden (emotional and financial) of taking care of such people who eventually ends up dying. Palliative care only deals with lessening physical, psychological suffering among other needs and not really curing the elderly people who are terminally ill. Physician assisted suicide or euthanasia on the other hand does not take all those tedious measures but goes directly to relieve the elderly people and the caregivers the agony. This means that physician assisted dying is good for cases that may be requiring immediate intervention and those that may not require palliative care (Zanskas Coduti, 2006).
The media, human rights activists and the public at large has severally whined that human beings are accomplishing murder through the practice of euthanasia. This however is an unfounded argument since euthanasia is the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her benefit. Terminal illness patients as well as persons suffering from severe pain and incompetence are the main candidates of euthanasia. It is rare to find euthanasia practiced outside health care settings and such should raise alarm. Murder on the other hand is defined as the act of killing another human being with malice. Murder can take place under various settings and circumstances including in heath care settings hence the need to draw a clear line between the two. From these definitions, euthanasia does not stand out as an act of murder and it is therefore not in order to reject physician assisted suicide and euthanasia on the grounds that it is equivalent to murder (Miller, 2002).
In murder, the person who is killed is not given an option to choose between dying and living. Euthanasia however has that option as defined under voluntary euthanasia. By an individual giving the informed consent to be killed, then there is no malice on the part of the person implementing the request. The individual who has requested to be killed is the one who should bear the responsibility of the death even though they have not done it by themselves. Having made the decision from a point of competence in their mental status, it means that the individual carrying out the act is not subjecting death on the killed individual. This should draw the line between involuntary euthanasia which is not supposed to be classified as euthanasia for it clearly falls under murder (McKenzie, 2004).
Conclusion
By looking critically at the arguments discussed in this paper, it is clear that physician assisted suicide or euthanasia is an act that is not acceptable since it involves taking advantage of the desperate situation of the elderly people to unjustly terminate their lives. It is not only against virtually all religious beliefs as well as social norms of several societies, but it actually amounts to murdering people hiding behind a lame excuse that the physicians are assisting in alleviating the desperate situation of the elderly people. By allowing such a practice to be carried out, the society would set up a very bad precedent that it is right to kill people as long as they are not adding a lot of value to it.
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