Essay/Term paper: Assisted suicide: an easier way out

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Science Reports

Assisted Suicide: An Easier Way Out


Doctor Kevorkian and other so-called "death doctors" should be permitted
to assist in the premature deaths of the terminally ill. Although many states
outlaw assisted suicides, nevertheless, they should by made legal for terminally
ill patients. These patients may not want to suffer a long, painful death. The
terminally ill will not get well, they might decide to make the decision of
ending their life alone if they cannot receive proper help, and assisted
suicides may one day be useful in discovering how the human brain works or
perhaps find a cure to some fatal diseases.

First, the terminally ill patients will not get better or become cured
of the disease they have. According to many medical physicians the expression
"terminally ill" means being in the final stages of a disease that is incurable
(Hentoff, p.10). If a person has a despairing disease such as AIDS, that person
may not want to live the rest of their short life with all the pain and
frustration.

Next, the terminally ill might injure their body even more by taking up
the decision in their own hands. Offering help in assisted suicides to the
fatally ill would prevent anything like this from happening. The Second Circuit
Court of Appeals created a law that prohibited physicians from helping their
patients die (Lemonick, p.82). Now, patients who are terminally ill and who
wish to die might decide to kill themselves in a manner that is less humane than
with a lethal injection or dosage of medicine. This new law makes it much
harder to get proper help in attaining an assisted suicide. This clearly would
cause many more problems than it would do good.

Last, there are many ways that using terminally ill patients that can
benefit science and the medical fields. Doctor Kevorkian has been advancing a
proposal to allow condemned criminals and terminally ill patients to perform
tests on their brains while they are still alive and willingly know they will
die soon afterward. Kevorkian claims that these human experiments allow us to
fully understand how the human body functions. He also proposed to allow the
criminals who are condemned to donate their organs for transplant. (Hosenball,
p.28-29). Through studying on live humans we would gain a much greater
understanding of ourselves and possibly discover some new medicinal drugs.

The terminally ill will not recover from their disease, they might
decide to unlawfully take their own life and possibly get hurt severely in the
process, and the experimentation on certain criminals and mortally ill patients
would aid in the development of new drugs. Allowing assisted suicides in our
country would be a great asset and opportunity for people who will not recover
to end all the suffering. The legalization of assisted suicides would prevent
many accidents from occurring such as people committing the act of suicide and
being unsuccessful. Legalizing aided suicides would also prevent people from
killing themselves illegally. With all of the technological advances in our
community today the legalization of aided suicides is a must. For the sake of
all humanity and virtue in our society today, exercise your freedom of choice
and look at assisted suicides with a different, but, moral perspective.

Works Cited

Hentoff, Nat. "From Assisted Suicides to Euthanasia." Village Voice 14 May
1996: p. 10

Hosenball, Mark. "The Real Jack Kevorkian." Newsweek 6 Dec. 1996: p. 28-29

Lemonick, Michael. "Defining the Right to Die." Time 15 Apr. 1996: p. 82