Physician-Assisted Suicide

Michael Mahannah

Dr. Christi Hein

ENGL 112

April 28, 2013

Physician-Assisted Suicide

“I am not afraid of dying. I am afraid of illness, and what it can do to me. I cannot defeat it; I am more and more ill. There is no consolation. Nothing, only loathing and pain…Who benefits of my dying? I stay between life and death and I wish I did not go like this at all. I see no reason not to leave it” (Manu). Currently legal in few U.S. states, physician-assisted suicide should be legalized throughout the United State in order to alleviate the inadequacies in terminal sedation.

1. Definitions:

1) Physician-assisted suicide (“PAS”) is when the physician provides the means for a patient to commit suicide. It has elements of both active and passive euthanasia.

2) Euthanasia is divided into four categories:

a) Active: active steps are taken to cause death

b) Passive: nothing is done to hasten death. This happens when the patient refuses treatment, artificial nutrition, and hydration.

c) Voluntary: the person has freely consented.

d) Involuntary: the person either has not freely consented or cannot freely consent but is presumed to want to die (Darr, Assistance in Dying: Part I. Europe - The Vanguard).

3) Terminal sedation: physicians prescribe, to patients in severe pain; large amounts of morphine in order alleviate the pain, with the understanding that it may hasten death (Manu).

2. History

The debate over euthanasia and PAS has been going on since ancient times. The Greeks and Romans preferred euthanasia over pain. The debate was mainly centered on the Hippocratic school of thought.

According to Emanuel, the modern debate over euthanasia was revived in the 16th and 17th centuries. The first known reference to euthanasia was made Sir Thomas Moore’s Utopia (Emanuel). It was not until the end of the 19th century that the debate began to include the use of the recently discovered drugs; morphine, chloroform, and ether.

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