Question by kyle: What do you think about this research paper I wrote? Its due tuesday this is my final draft?
To live or not to live
Although physician assisted suicide is a very controversial topic, it should be allowed because people who are suffering in a terminal situation should not have to suffer. You have been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer this is not in any way a pleasant way to die. You have constant pain all through the night this also leads to no sleep. You can hardly sleep, eat or even think because the pain is so overwhelming that it takes you over. The pain is not just overwhelming it is also constant it seems to never leave your body the doctor prescribes you every pain medication that is physically possible. You have bed sores that are hurting all over your body because you have been too weak to get up or even move. You just wonder if there is anyway out of this anyway to get rid of this over bearing non stop pain.
The start of the first legal physician assisted suicide in United States started with Oregon. The first ever bill to legalize voluntary euthanasia in the United States was introduced in Ohio legislature in 1906. It was provided that when a mentally competent adult was terminally ill or hurt his doctor could ask him in the presence of three other witnesses whether he wished to cease to live. If the adult said yes three other physicians had to agree the patient’s condition was hopeless before the adult could be put to death. This bill was eliminated. The bill sounded to be very lawful and just yet it was defeated. Oregon became the first government to legalize physician assisted suicide. Physician assisted suicide is unknowingly not a right protected by our constitution. Physician assisted suicide involves prescribing lethal drugs for a patient with the knowledge that the patients intends to end their life with such medication. Euthanasia the most common way is the lethal injection of the patient by the doctor. The opponents of the assisted suicide are worried about the abuses of assisted if it were to become legalized.
The bill that was eventually passed so that Oregon may have assisted suicide was called the right to die bill according to Richard (caring for dying). The patient may receive life ending lethal drugs under a few conditions. 1. Two doctors have to agree that the patient isn’t going to live more then 6 months. 2. The patients asked the doctor three times about for help in ending their life and the third time would be in writing. 3. Doctor waits at least 15 days after the first time the patient asked and two days after their final third request. The patient is offered alternate routes and hospice care instead of ending their lives. This bill was passed in November 1994 with a 51 percent to 49 percent win.
The only States in the America that have legalized physician assisted suicide under limited circumstances are Oregon, Washington and recently Montana. Montana ruled that there was nothing in state law to prevent doctors from prescribing lethal drugs too mentally, terminally ill patients. States with statutes that explicitly criminalize assisted suicide are Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.
The States that criminalize assisted suicide just through common law are Iowa, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, and Wyoming.
Jack Kevorkian started a whole new controversial argument on physician assisted suicide. Jack Kevorkian took place in many assisted suicides before anyone thought anything about legalizing or is even physician assisted suicide legal. This is why it had such a huge affect because no one new about this physician assisted suicide that came up. Jack Kevorkian publicized his work in helping patients end their lives so he could help more lives. He claimed he helped more then 130 terminally ill or chronically ill patients take their own lives.
Kevorkian truly believe it was okay and the right thing to do, to help people stop suffering by helping them take their lives as a physician he even went as far as to going commercial to raise money for his cause. Kevorkian is also a painter and would sell his oil paintings to produce funds towards his cause. His assisted suicides become more and more popular and public. He was tried many times in court but never gets convicted. Kevorkian was an extremist, he believed in something and wouldn’t let anything get in the way of that. On May 7, 1996 he has a trial and nearly hours after for what he’s being tried for he commits. He was present at the suicide of Austin Bastable, a tool maker from Canada that had multiple sclerosis. He had performed assisted suicide by breathing in carbon monoxide as a number of doctors including Kevorkian witnessed. He was the first Canadian to die with doctor Kevorkian present. Bastable had said that his multi    Read more...