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physician assisted suicide
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Physician Assisted Suicide: The Dangers of Legalization and Alternatives Physician assisted suicide is a rapidly growing concern that is troubling the lawmakers of our country. Physician assisted suicide is currently illegal in the United States of America in every state except Oregon where it has been legalized under certain circumstances. There have been many challenges concerning the constitutionality of the ban on physician assisted suicide. Physician assisted suicide should remain illegal because it murders innocent people and it violates the Hippocratic Oath. “Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all I must not play god” (NOVA Online 1). This excerpt from the modern version of the Hippocratic Oath it specifically states, “I must not play god.” That is exactly what doctors are doing when they practice physician assisted suicide. They are picking who lives and who dies. There are many laws concerning physician assisted suicide. Thirty-five states already ban assisted suicide by law and most of the rest ban it by court precedent or custom (Mauro and others 1). Physician assisted suicide has been illegal for many years. Anglo-American common law has punished or otherwise disapproved of assisting suicide for more than 700 years (Biskupic 3). The ramifications of legalizing physician assisted suicide would damage the patient-physician relationship, jeopardize the medical profession’s role of healing, and lessen the value placed on life, especially the disabled and vulnerable (Loviglio 1). The line between healing and harming a patient could be blurred by the legalization of physician assisted suicide (Loviglio 1). A society the allows physician assisted suicide may eventually follow along the path of Hitler’s euthanasia program that began with the disposal of the physically and mentally imperfect and culminated into the annihilation groups the Nazis considered impure (Rein 59). Dr. Timothy Quill helped one of his patients, Diane, commit suicide.
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