Doctor Assisted Suicide

Paper Summary:

In this article, the writer notes that California once again has written a bill to legalize assisted suicides. The writer points out that the proposed law is modeled after the one that passed in Oregon, which in 2006 resulted in 46 residents, most of them suffering from cancer, killing themselves after their physician gave them a prescription for a lethal amount of drugs. The writer discusses whether such a law should become national. Given the Supreme Court's recent ruling and some of the studies that have been conducted, the writer argues that people should have the right to decide if they one to have an assisted suicide, but it is necessary for the patient to talk with more than one doctor when making the decision.

From the Paper:

"The issue of assisted suicide became newsworthy in 1990 when Dr. Jack Kevorkian helped Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old Alzheimer's patient, take her life. He met Adkins in a Volkswagen van he had outfitted with a "suicide machine" consisting of three chemical solutions fed into an intravenous line needle. Dr. Kevorkian is not the only one who supports doctor assisted suicide. The Hemlock Society is a group committed to promoting the legalization of euthanasia. In 1994, Oregon passed the "Death with Dignity" act, which allows the terminally-ill to end their lives through the voluntary self-administration of lethal medications, expressly prescribed by a physician."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Breitbart, W. (1990) Cancer Pain and Suicide. Advances in Pain Research and Therapy. 16: 399
• Hendin, H. (1994) Seduced by Death: Doctors, Patients, and the Dutch Cure. Issues in Law and Medicine 10: 123
• Muskin, P.R. (1998). The Request to Die: Role for a Psychodynamic Perspective on Physician-Assisted Suicide, JAMA 279: 323, 327
• Moskowitz, E. (2003) The Consensus on Assisted Suicide. Hastings Center Report 33(4):46
• Storm, H.H. et. al. (1992) Suicides Among Danish Patients With Cancer: 1971 to 1986 Cancer 69: 1507

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