Assisted Suicide: How Does It Benefit Our Society?

Assisted suicide is an age old debate that goes back to the time of the great philosophers. This debate will keep popping up until a reasonable resolution comes about. Personally having seen people suffer from life threatening illness makes me believe that a person should have the right to choose to end their life in a dignified way. According to a recent AP-Ipsos poll 68 percent of Americans thought that there are circumstances where a patient should have the choice to die. Having said that, let's examine the pros and cons of assisted suicide (MSNBC).

First, let's look at the benefits of assisted suicide. It will allow a person to have a speedier less painful death, if this is done with the help of a doctor who will be able to prescribe medication to help and tell you how to do it. This is called physician assisted suicide. It's quicker than a slow painful death from a terminal disease or suffering from starvation due to life support being withdrawn. One family member recounts their mother's death saying, "My siblings and I watched our mother die a horrific death from throat cancer. The cancer was wrapped around her neck blood vessels, so her death was a race between her brain slowly exploding in one stroke after another when blood could drain from her head, or her heart exploding trying to pump blood into her head. She made the choice to stop hydration and food. Because she was well nourished, she did not lose consciousness in the 2 days, nor die in the 7 days the doctor predicted" (Flynn & Boyd). Not only did this family have to endure watching their mother die a slow agonizing death but they will always remember her as she was at the end.

People should be able to have all options available to them when choosing how they would like their life to end. Currently, Oregon is the only state where physician assisted suicide is legal. I don't see how this is much different from pulling the plug on a person on life support or giving someone so much pain medicine that it kills them. This way would be a better way to end life, than having run out of options, a person decides to starve themselves to death. This is exactly what happened with a 62 year old man who had cerebral palsy which he dealt with until he had a stroke which paralyzed him so bad that he ended up in a nursing home (Wolfe).

If not legalized, it will be done in secret and could be very dangerous. This has already been done in Jack Kevorkian's case. Although in the end it was not so secret what was being done, Dr. Kevorkian assisted many patients in death. The suicide machine he set up with odds and ends parts was not very safe. A man named Darrell Hildebrandt who has been suffering from Aids for eight years has decided he is not going to die like his partner did. He has a doctor, who he wishes to remain anonymous, that has given him Demerol which he will take with alcohol to end his life "a few weeks or a week before Aids kills" him (Wolfe).

This would give people who are terminally ill and feel as though they would be a burden to their family and society a way out. If they know it will be a long drawn out battle for life and expenses will mount up and may use up all their money which they would like others to have this allows them to choose to end their life before things get to that point. Let's look at a recent study which showed the financial consequences of caring for a dying family member. Only people who were ill enough that they "had a fifty percent chance to live six months were included in the study." After being discharged from the hospital "about one- third required considerable care giving from their families; in 20 percent of cases a family member had to quit work or make some other major lifestyle change; almost one-third of these families lost all of their life savings; and just under 30 percent lost a major source of income"(Ackerman).

Now let's look at the negative aspects of assisted suicide. It would ruin the trust between doctor and patient. If assisted suicide were legalized I am sure it would be very similar to Oregon's law where you have to have a physician help you. In this case, some people are afraid that patients will no longer trust that doctors will have their best interest at heart or will try and push a patient into deciding to end their own life. Patients may believe that when terminally ill and with little time to live they would be seen as a liability and doctors would convince their care givers that this is the best option or coerce them to choose to end their life this way. Doctors would no longer be seen as protectors of life but also