Assisted Suicide 1 Assisted Suicide Geterdone125 Course Name and Number: Assisted Suicide Instructor’s Name: November 18th 2013 Introduction Assisted suicide should be adopted as the best way of relieving patients of their suffering. It is indisputable that doctors try their best to treat patients by diagnosing and prescribing drugs but this does not always relieve the pain and suffering the patients, especially those with terminal illnesses such as cancer and diabetes among others, go through (Morrison, 2008). When one is suffering from a terminal illness, he knows that death is an eventuality and therefore, it becomes a question of when and not whether he will die. Everyone has the right to die with dignity and it is for this purpose that they should be allowed to choose when and how to die. Assisted suicide therefore becomes a viable option whereby the patient requests another person, for example a physician, to assist him in ending his life. The physician provides the patient with the means to commit suicide but the act itself is upon the patient to carry out. This is as opposed to euthanasia whereby the doctor is directly involved in the termination of a patient’s life (Morrison, 2008). However, there are those on the opposing side, who feel that legalizing assisted suicide will cause more harm than good. This paper is a critical evaluation of assisted suicide and why it should be advocated for. Assisted Suicide Assisted suicide is a highly controversial issue in the contemporary society. Suicide has always been viewed in bad light, especially by some religious organizations such as the Catholic Church due to the fact that Christianity teaches that God is the overall creator and as such, he is the only one who can take away life. In this context, it is believed that committing suicide denies one the right to go to heaven as it is an unforgivable sin (Foley, 2002). However, the concept of assisted suicide is not unique to the contemporary society. In ancient Greece, 1st century B.C, the practice was common and the government supported it by way of supplying lethal drugs to persons wishing to commit suicide. This was perceived as a way of preserving a person’s honor but with the advent of Christianity, the perception towards suicide changed dramatically (Weir, 2001). Technological advancements in the field of medicine have had a positive effect on public health. Due to these, patients suffering from terminal illnesses such as cancer can now live longer as medical procedures such as chemotherapy are now available. Life support machines are available in hospitals worldwide and this has helped a lot in prolonging the lives of patients suffering from chronic illnesses such as heart and kidney failure. A person suffering from diabetes can also live longer due to the availability of synthetic insulin, which must be injected into the patient at regular intervals for the remainder of his life. However, prolonging these people’s ...

1. Assisted Suicide 1
Assisted Suicide
Geterdone125
Course Name and Number:
Assisted Suicide
Instructor’s Name:
November 18th 2013
Introduction
Assisted suicide should be adopted as the best way of relieving
patients of their suffering. It is indisputable that doctors try
their best to treat patients by diagnosing and prescribing drugs
but this does not always relieve the pain and suffering the
patients, especially those with terminal illnesses such as cancer
and diabetes among others, go through (Morrison, 2008). When
one is suffering from a terminal illness, he knows that death is
an eventuality and therefore, it becomes a question of when and
not whether he will die. Everyone has the right to die with
dignity and it is for this purpose that they should be allowed to
choose when and how to die. Assisted suicide therefore becomes
a viable option whereby the patient requests another person, for
example a physician, to assist him in ending his life. The
physician provides the patient with the means to commit suicide
but the act itself is upon the patient to carry out. This is as
opposed to euthanasia whereby the doctor is directly involved in
the termination of a patient’s life (Morrison, 2008). However,

2. there are those on the opposing side, who feel that legalizing
assisted suicide will cause more harm than good. This paper is a
critical evaluation of assisted suicide and why it should be
advocated for.
Assisted Suicide
Assisted suicide is a highly controversial issue in the
contemporary society. Suicide has always been viewed in bad
light, especially by some religious organizations such as the
Catholic Church due to the fact that Christianity teaches that
God is the overall creator and as such, he is the only one who
can take away life. In this context, it is believed that
committing suicide denies one the right to go to heaven as it is
an unforgivable sin (Foley, 2002). However, the concept of
assisted suicide is not unique to the contemporary society. In
ancient Greece, 1st century B.C, the practice was common and
the government supported it by way of supplying lethal drugs to
persons wishing to commit suicide. This was perceived as a way
of preserving a person’s honor but with the advent of
Christianity, the perception towards suicide changed
dramatically (Weir, 2001).
Technological advancements in the field of medicine have had a
positive effect on public health. Due to these, patients suffering
from terminal illnesses such as cancer can now live longer as
medical procedures such as chemotherapy are now available.
Life support machines are available in hospitals worldwide and
this has helped a lot in prolonging the lives of patients suffering
from chronic illnesses such as heart and kidney failure. A
person suffering from diabetes can also live longer due to the
availability of synthetic insulin, which must be injected into the
patient at regular intervals for the remainder of his life.
However, prolonging these people’s lives does not eliminate the
psychological trauma and pain that they go through. Instead, it

3. only helps to prolong the dying process, which could be painful
and unbearable to the patient (Weir, 2001). Due to this, they
should be allowed to determine their destiny through assisted
suicide. By so doing, they would be able to manage their
uncertainties by selecting a painless mode to terminate their
lives. For example, a patient may instruct his doctor to unplug
the life support machine so as to let him die. In addition, it
would allow them to prepare their families so that it does not
become difficult for them to take the news. In this context, the
family would have time to bid farewell to their loved one as
opposed to when they have to wait for nature to take its course.
Terminal illnesses are highly expensive to manage. A person
may be forced to sell his property and assets in order to afford
paying for his or her medical bills. This means that such
patients could utilize all their lifetime savings for this purpose
and to a great extent, this would amount to selfishness. Families
of the patient would have to continue with their lives; children
would continue to demand school fees, food would be needed to
maintain their health among other basic necessities and all this
should not be denied in order to prolong a person’s life
especially if he or she is willing to die. All this agony can be
reduced by allowing assisted suicide, failure to which such
families would end up incurring heavy debts, which could leave
them out in the streets whereby they would become an extra
burden to the government and society in general (Caplan, 2001).
Every person has the unalienable right to pursue happiness but
if they feel that their life is unworthy, then, they should be
allowed to choose to end it (Caplan, 2001). People continue to
commit suicide using primitive means such as drowning
themselves intentionally, hanging, ingesting poison among
others, which subject them to unnecessary pain and shame
especially if it fails to work. Legalizing assisted suicide would
ensure that these people are taken through guiding and
counseling in order to give them an opportunity to reflect on
their lives and make an informed decision after which they

4. would be allowed to choose the best method to hasten their
death. It is usually painful to have a patient at home, who
cannot take care of his or her own day to day activities such as
bathing, feeding, taking himself to the toilet among others. Such
people may feel that they have become a burden to their care
givers especially if they have conditions such as old age, which
cannot be reversed through any scientific means. If they want to
die, no person or institution should prevent them from pursuing
their happiness, which would be to rest in peace. However, such
cases should never be determined by people other than the
patient in order to avoid the probability of assisted suicide
turning into a method of eliminating weak persons in the
society. The Nazi government in Germany, during Hitler’s rule,
utilized involuntary Euthanasia as a way of eliminating
unproductive persons such as those with disabilities, the aged
among others and this cannot be acceptable in a democratic
society (Foley, 2002).
The debate surrounding assisted suicide is more or less similar
to other debates such as legalization of prostitution and
abortion, which are highly based on morality and sanctity of
life. However, due to the fact that most of the countries around
the world have failed to legalize these activities, the public has
continued to exercise them in the backstreets under the watchful
eye of the authorities. This has contributed to an increase in
deaths arising from these illegal activities as the government
does not have sufficient control over those who perform them.
Similarly, continuing to illegalize assisted suicide will only
contribute to cases of unwarranted deaths as a result of lack of
proper legislations to define and dictate who should be assisted
to commit suicide. In the US, there are only 3 states i.e.
Oregon, Washington and Montana, which have legalized
assisted suicide (Emmanuel, 2009). However, physicians such
as Jack Kevorkian continued to assist people to commit suicide
especially in his state of Michigan, where this practice is illegal
under the common law. Despite his involvement and arrest,

5. Kevorkian, who is credited as having assisted more than 130
patients to commit suicide, was released on parole in 2007 after
serving 8 years out of the probable maximum 25 years he could
have served for committing second degree murder (Emmanuel,
2009).
This means that others could also be doing it in secret thereby
implying that the law is not as prohibitive as opponents may
want to believe. Furthermore, there is no logic in having a law
abolishing assisted suicide in the US whereas some states in the
same country have legalized it. It may be illegal in Michigan
but people on a suicide mission can travel to Oregon and have
the same done without having any legal implications. For
example, the practice is illegal in Britain but this did not
prevent Craig Ewert to travel to Zurich in Switzerland to have
his life terminated. Ewert had been diagnosed with Lou
Gehrig’s disease, which is said to kill within a period of 3 years
after the first symptoms have begun to show. The controversy
surrounding Ewert’s suicide, especially due its publicity,
prompted the British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to issue a
remark in which he advised the media to be sensitive while
airing the live coverage of the suicide. This stirred emotions
especially among dying with dignity activists, who thought that
it was necessary and ripe for the parliament to initiate public
discussions on the issue in order to review the merits and
demerits of legalizing assisted suicide in the country. Ewert’s
family was okay with his decision and therefore, this should be
taken as an example of numerous people, who are living in pain
and anguish just because their governments have continued to
deprive them of their liberty to hasten their lives and they
cannot afford to travel to other jurisdictions where assisted
suicide is legal (Morrison, 2008).
On the other hand, legalizing assisted suicide would be a way of
promoting a serious injustice in the society. Every person has an
unalienable right to life, which is protected by local and
international laws, such as the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights (Emmanuel, 2009). No person therefore has the right to

6. assist or advise another to take his own life irrespective of the
prevailing circumstances. Palliative care is available worldwide
and as such, there is no justification for patients to feel the need
of hastening their own deaths. Palliative care, unlike curative
care, concentrates on making the patients comfortable by
reducing their suffering and pain without prolonging or
shortening their lives. Legalizing assisted suicide will create a
loophole for involuntary euthanasia, whereby other people will
take it upon themselves to determine the worthiness of life or
lack of it in those who are under their care. This has a potential
of promoting widespread murder and homicide, which a just
society should work hard to eliminate. The case of Jack
Kevorkian is a testimony on the amount of damage that
legalizing assisted suicide can cause. It is believed that some of
Kevorkian clients did not have any justifiable reasons to commit
suicide but he assisted them anyway. Though the physician
emphasized on the need to evaluate clients’ psychological needs
before executing their death wishes, he rarely performed any
psychological tests to his patients, which is important in
determining whether there could be an alternative way of
solving the patients’ suffering (Morrison, 2008). However, with
proper guidelines and legislation in place, it would be easier for
the government to monitor and regulate physician assisted
suicide. The US, for example, is a country, which is founded on
the principles of democracy and protection of basic human
rights and therefore, there is no way the government could
allow the killing of innocent persons.
Suicide remains unlawful in almost all law jurisdictions and
when it fails, the culprit is made to face consequences in
accordance with the law. It is true to say that people who
commit suicide do so due to the feeling that their life is
unworthy. In this context, there is no big difference between
motives in normal suicide and assisted suicide and therefore,
the law should be consistent while dealing with this issue. The
slippery slope argument makes sense in that if assisted suicide
is legalized, we will definitely find more people requesting for

7. assistance to commit suicide even though they may not qualify
to do so. Proponents of assisted suicide argue that only those
suffering from terminal illnesses would be qualified. However,
this would encourage more population especially, those living
desperately, to be accorded the right to hasten their death
(Emmanuel, 2009).
Every person has a different opinion on what a worthwhile life
entails. Legalizing assisted suicide would mean that the law
would have to accommodate self determination as a basis to
grant wishes to commit suicide. This is more so because it is
highly difficult to define unbearable suffering or pain in a
conventional manner as the ability to withstand the two varies
according to individuals. For example, a person suffering from
cancer in its advanced stages may lack the need to live as this
would only subject him to more suffering. Similarly, a person
who is suffering from HIV/AIDs may find it unworthy to wait
until it becomes advanced to the extent of him or her being
subjected to ridicule and prejudice by the highly subjective
society we are living in. Both patients have a viable reason to
want to commit suicide in order to die with dignity. However,
the patient suffering from HIV/AIDs is not terminally ill as he
has a chance of living a long healthy and productive life
through palliative care. Similarly, a person who has just had an
accident and lost some of his limbs or has become paralyzed
may have a self determined reason to want to commit suicide
owing to the fact that he would have to spend the rest of his life
depending on other people to care for him. However, through
guidance and counseling, such a person may discover other
avenues to make his life more comfortable and worthwhile.
Legalizing assisted suicide will offer these people an easy exit,
which would eventually develop into a catastrophe (Caplan,
2001).
Compassion and sympathy are two important aspects of
healthcare administration (Morrison, 2008). These motivate
physicians and the society in general to treat patients as human

8. beings irrespective of the time remaining before they die. The
fact that proponents of assisted suicide expect the patients to
make reasonable decisions as whether to commit suicide implies
that these patients are not affected at the intellectual level and
hence, they are people who can contribute to economic growth
in a country or state. Lack of compassion and sympathy
therefore means that doctors and physicians will tend to lack the
passion needed to assist dying patients with quality care on the
basis that the law supports assisted suicide. Furthermore,
compassion does not entail helping others to take their own
lives irrespective of the circumstances at hand and therefore,
assisted suicide should remain illegal in order to ensure that
healthcare providers maintain their integrity by focusing on the
wellbeing of the patients as their primary objective.
Furthermore, the Hippocratic Oath forbids doctors and nurses
from assisting or even proposing death as a solution to a
patient’s illness (Morrison, 2008).
Conclusion
Assisted suicide is a medical practice, through which a patient
seeks the help of a care giver to hasten his death. It is a
controversial issue in the contemporary society, which has
continued to attract criticism and support in equal measure.
Those in support claim that it is the best way to reduce pain and
suffering in patients suffering from terminal illnesses. In this
context, it has been observed that it is the right of every person
to pursue happiness but where there is no life, for example in
the case of a cancer patient with only six months to live,
assisted suicide becomes an important solution. In rebuttal,
opponents argue that life ends at death and since such a patient
is expected to make a correct decision, then, it means he is alive
and intellectually capable. The major issue as regards to this
debate is the moral question. God is the ultimate giver and taker
of life and man has acknowledged this by legislating laws that
protect the right to life. Assisted suicide, therefore, is immoral

9. and those who facilitate it should be punished. However, it is
important to mention that just as prostitution and abortion have
continued to flourish in the presence of prohibitive laws around
the world, assisted suicide will continue to exist even where it
is abolished. Furthermore, some states such as Oregon and
Washington permit assisted suicide. This makes it difficult to
prevent people from travelling to these places to have their
death wishes honored. In addition, criminalizing the practice
will only yield to people who do not qualify for assisted suicide
being admitted by rogue physicians operating illegally.
Therefore, the society must embrace assisted suicide as an
evolution in the field of medicine and legalize it so as to make
it easy for the authorities to create guidelines to facilitate
monitoring of the practice so as to be able to protect innocent
civilians especially the poor, minorities and those who cannot
afford healthcare insurance.
References
Caplan, A. (2001). Assisted Suicide: Finding Common Ground.
Indiana University Press
Emmanuel, M. (2009). Regulating How We Die: The Ethical,
Medical, and Legal Issues Surrounding Physician-Assisted
Suicide. Harvard University Press
Foley, K. (2002). The Case against Assisted Suicide: For the
Right to End-of-Life Care. The Johns Hopkins University Press
Morrison, E. (2008). Health Care Ethics: Critical Issues for the
21st Century. Jones & Bartlett Publishers
Weir, R. (2001). Physician-Assisted Suicide. Indiana University
Press
[INSERT TITLE HERE] 2
Running head: [INSERT TITLE HERE]

10. [INSERT TITLE HERE]
Student Name
Allied American University
Author Note
This paper was prepared for [INSERT COURSE NAME],
[INSERT COURSE ASSIGNMENT] taught by [INSERT
INSTRUCTOR’S NAME].
Directions: Choose one of the two questions below and write a
paper about the topic that is 3 pages in length. All references
included should be in accordance with APA guidelines. You
should use at least one source outside of the textbook.
1. Discuss the various gender inequalities in education and
the workplace. Refer to examples within your textbook and
research one article online for each topic. Detail the
differences in graduation rates, employment rates, and any other
information you feel differentiates women and men.

11. 2. Consider the term “The Greying of America.” Define the
term and discuss the impact on American culture. Then, look at
how an older population will impact the United States, based
upon your research, in the near future.
[INSERT TITLE HERE] 2
Running head: [INSERT TITLE HERE]
[INSERT TITLE HERE]
Student Name
Allied American University
Author Note
This paper was prepared for [INSERT COURSE NAME],
[INSERT COURSE ASSIGNMENT] taught by [INSERT
INSTRUCTOR’S NAME].
Directions: Research the characteristics of different forms of
government. Your paper should be at least three pages in length
and should compare at least three types of governmental

12. systems. Cite your sources according to APA guidelines. In
your paper, discuss how each type of government would be
beneficial or harmful to the general population.