Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a medical practitioner helps a healthy person of sound mind to die through the prescription of lethal drugs (Cholbi, 2015). The person then ingests the lethal medicine and consequently dies. It is often used where a person is in immense pain, and there is no possibility of healing. Therefore, the medical practitioner prescribes medication that would help the patient die and hence alleviate his or her present suffering. Medically assisted suicide differs from euthanasia in that while the latter requires the medical practitioner to inject the person with the lethal drug. Personally, the former requires the person to ingest the prescribed lethal medication him or herself ( Young, 2016) .
Medically assisted suicide has been in existence for a long time. However, it has only been accepted in the legal framework of several countries in the recent past. The Switzerland law and medical policy approved assisted suicide practice in 1940 (Cholbi, 2015) . In 1997, the Columbian government equally adopted the practice after it gained much traction in the country. Countries such as Netherlands, Luxembourg, England, and Wales equally adopted the practices in 2002, 2009 and 2010 respectively ( Young, 2016). Several states within the United States have equally adopted the practice in their respective jurisdictions.
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Many medical practitioners have voiced their support for medically assisted suicide. Dr. Kevorkian was one such medical practitioner who openly supported that practice. He argued that death in itself was not a criminal offense. Moreover, he held the opinion that patients with terminal illness and particularly those in immense pain should be allowed the right to die through the medically assisted suicide. He claimed to have helped 130 such patients to die peacefully (Cholbi, 2015). In 1999, Dr. Kevorkian was charged for his role in advocating for the assisted suicide and participating in the practice. He was consequently convicted of second-degree murder. He served a seven years sentence in prison before his release in 2007 (Viller, 2014).
Despite the controversy surrounding the physician-assisted suicide, the practice has several pros and cons when considered objectively. The major pros of this practice include the fact that it helps the patients to alleviate the pain they are currently undergoing. Secondly, it helps the patient as well as families of the terminally ill patient to save on the cost that they would have otherwise incurred in healthcare in the long run since the patient would still die ( Young, 2016). Thirdly, the practice allows doctors as well as nurses to concentrate on patients who have chances of survival rather than waste time on patients who are bound to die. Moreover, practice helps the medical practitioner to save and preserve vital organs in the patient that can help another patient to survive (Viller, 2014). Lastly, the practice helps the patients to avoid other messy and traumatizing options of suicide that patients could choose.
The major cons of this practice include the fact that it violates the doctors’ as well as other medical practitioners’ Hippocratic oath. Secondly, this practice has the potential to open a gate for unnecessary suicide, non-critical patient suicide as well as other abuses of the practice (Viller, 2014). Thirdly, this practice prompts medical practitioners to give up on patient recovery more quickly without exploiting all available options of medication (Viller, 2014). Lastly, this practice generally devalues human life.
In summary, medically assisted suicide occurs where a medical practitioner gives a patient with a terminal illness a lethal medication that the patient ingests leading to his or her death. This model of assisted dying has generally been accepted in different states within the United States as well as different countries globally. The best-known medical practitioner who advocated for this practice was Dr. Kevorkian.
References
Cholbi, M. (2015). Medically Enabled Suicides. New Directions in the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia International Library of Ethics, Law, and the New Medicine, 169-184.
Viller, D. (2014). Autonomy Theory’s Implications for the Debate over Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia. The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, 4 (6), 224-236.
Young, R. (2016). Physician-assisted suicide. Medically Assisted Death, 4 (2), 44-60.
