Assisted+Suicide

//-Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."// // - // Bill Maher - //Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or "broken heart," is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one. -//Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a lifelong advocate for assisted suicide, in her suicide note on August 17, 1935 // Vacco v. Quill: // New York ban on physician-assisted suicide was constitutional, and preventing doctors from assisting their patients, even those terminally ill and/or in great pain, was a legitimate state interest that was well within the authority of the state to regulate. Basically, there is no constitutional guarantee of a "right to die." // Washington //// v. Glucksberg // : the Supreme Court of the United States held that a right to assistance in committing suicide was not protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment // Gonzales v. // //Oregon:// the United States Attorney General could not enforce the Controlled Substances Act against physicians prescribing drugs for the assisted suicide of the terminally ill as permitted by an Oregon law. Is euthanasia an appropriate response to the excruciating pain of terminally ill patients who desire to die? Or, is euthanasia never justified? Is it appropriate for governments to effectively force people to live through their pain by denying them the right to euthanasia? Are there sufficient pain medications in existence to override concerns surrounding pain? Is this an insufficient solution because it simply puts people in a "drugged state"? Do people general have a right to die or to commit suicide? Does the government have a compelling interest to stop them? Is the "sanctity of live" a sufficient reason to stop them? Does euthanasia violate the "sanctity of life"? Do exceptions exist to the "sanctity of life" in which it is acceptable to end life prematurely? Does the government have the right to define the "sanctity of life" or should individuals and families be able to make their own determination about when life is "sacred" and when it may cease to be? Does criminalizing euthanasia violate the notion of "equal protection" by enabling those on life-support to withdraw support and effectively commit suicide, while denying persons with terminal illnesses, but whom aren't on life support, an opportunity to die quickly? Are non-treatment approaches to speeding death, such as "pulling the tubes", justified? Or, do they needlessly subject patients to pain that could otherwise be prevented through euthanasia? Is euthanasia "unnatural" or not "how God intended" death to occur? Do doctors have a right to assist in euthanasia (assisted suicide)? Or does this give them too much power? Are doctors sufficiently trained in administering euthanasia? Is it their place to do so? Or, does the Hippocratic Oath restrict them from this practice? What is the role of physicians? Are they healers //only//? Or can they participate in decisions regarding ending a life? Is it reasonable to place these burdens on doctors? Does it traumatize them? Do the families of terminally-ill loved ones have an interest in euthanasia? Do they appear to support it? Would the legalization of euthanasia allow greater family awareness and involvement in any choice? Will families abuse euthanasia, possibly pressuring their loved ones to pursue the option out of a selfish desire to avoid the burden of carrying for him or her until death? Can third-party regulators help reduce the risk of these abuses occurring? Are wider abuses a significant concern surrounding euthanasia? Would the legalization of the practice open a slippery slope to abuses? Will doctors begin pressuring individuals to commit suicide (euthanasia)? Will doctors make moves to euthanasia the disabled? Will doctors aggressively implement involuntary euthanasia? Will regulations be capable of constraining a slippery slope from developing? Can appropriate criteria be created for eligibility for euthanasia, and can those criteria be regulated and enforced? Are the poor at risk simply because they are less able to afford health care, which may give an incentive to health care providers to euthanize an individual in order to cut costs? Will euthanasia become a cynical option for insurance companies to cut costs? Or, is it a legitimate consideration that euthanasia may reduce health care costs? Will it reduce the incentive of doctors to provide strong palliative care, causing them to ask, "what's the point if we have euthanasia"? -should be allowed to die with dignity -shouldn’t have to endure pain beyond their capacity- 5% of the terminally ill suffer unrelievable pain. Counter (for either): life is always sacred -Hippocratic Oath: “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone, even if asked, nor suggest any such counsel” Counter: Spirit of the oath- calls for doctors to do what will benefit those in their care. Also, written long ago, couldn’t foresee present medical state. -↓ trust in doctors Counter: Random telephone survey of 1,117 adults in the US on their attitudes toward physician aid in dying-“Only 20 percent said that legalizing euthanasia would cause them to trust their personal physician less”-Study by Wake Forest University Medical Center -Could lead other vulnerable groups (like teens or the chronically ill) to see suicide as “therapeutic”
 * Assisted suicide for the Terminally Ill** Aubrey 1/29/09
 * Definition**: “Physician-assisted suicide occurs when a physician facilitates a patient’s death by providing the necessary means and/or information to enable the patient to perform the life-ending act.” –American Medical Association
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 * Background:** Legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland. In the Netherlands, voluntary euthanasia has been legal since 1983, with some 3,000 people requesting it each year. It has been legal for the terminally ill in Oregon since 1997 and Washington since 2008. Also, due to a court ruling on December 6, 2008, it is presently legal in Montana, though appeals are underway. In Oregon, the bill was titled “Death with Dignity.” Only about 340 people total, mostly ill with cancer, have exercised the right in Oregon in the more than ten years it has been legal.
 * Supreme court: **
 * Possible questions (you could turn almost any of these into arguments): **
 * For: **
 * Case:** The case of Chantal Sébire, a French woman who requested assisted suicide, has received world wide attention, and perfectly illustrates this issue. She suffers from a rare, incurable sinus cancer which has left her in great pain and without the faculties of sight, taste, or smell, and which will eventually lead to brain damage, then finally kill her. She said, “I no longer accept this enduring pain, and this protruding eye that nothing can be done about. I want to go out celebrating, surrounded by my children, friends, and doctors before I'm put to sleep definitively at dawn.” Assisted suicide isn’t legal in France, so despite her pleas, she has to wait it out to the bitter end.
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