Doctor Assisted Suicide

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that doctor assisted suicide in the form of passive euthanasia should be legalized on the primary basis that human suffering should not be prolonged by medical science simply to extend physical life. The author stresses that terminally ill human beings have the inherent right to refuse medical treatment because they are the moral guardians of their own lives and the ultimate authority to be considered---not doctors, lawyers, insurance companies nor the government. The paper suggests that priorities have to be established in circumstances involving contending rights; in right-to-die issues, the highest priority should be the emotional, psychological and physical well-being of the person faced with inevitable death.

From the Paper:

"This moral argument offered by opponents of doctor assisted suicide is of particular interest, for many of these groups explicitly assert that morality includes physical causality and moral culpability. It holds that active euthanasia establishes the physical causality of the physician, while passive euthanasia establishes the physical causality of the disease itself. In other words, in active and passive euthanasia the moral culpability remains the same, that is, it is in the hands of the physician. This is the due to the fact that the physician has the duty and the moral obligation to keep the patient alive. While these two separate worlds within the moral realm may cross in some places, it does not mean that they are one and the same, and this is one of the many reasons that the distinction should not be abolished."

More papers on Doctor Assisted Suicide:

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• Term Paper # 60761 : "Physician-Assisted Suicide"

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