Could Assisted Suicide Be An Option?

The idea of suicide often doesn’t sit right with individuals. So what about the idea of assisted suicide? While it may sound scary to some, assisted suicide, or physician-assisted suicide, is simply just a doctor assisting a patient in suicide. Check out this article that explains assisted suicide, and its difference from euthanasia. Assisted suicide is a pretty controversial issue since it has to do with a doctor essentially killing their patient. Assisted suicide may not be something you want to think about right now, but it’s important to know about it so you can make an informed decision in the future.

Assisted suicide currently is legal in in nine states in the U.S., as well as the District of Columbia. It was first made legal in Oregon on October 27th, 1997 when the Death with Dignity Law was passed. According to the Death with Dignity’s website, the “Death with Dignity laws allow qualified terminally ill adults to voluntarily request and receive a prescription medication to hasten their death”.

It might seem as though physicians are doing their patients a favor by helping them to end their suffering, but some individuals see this as a violation of the Hippocratic oath. One reason it is seen as a violation is because in the Hippocratic oath it states “Above all, I must not play at God”. Some would consider that if a physician ended a patients life, instead of God Himself, then that physician would be playing the role of God instead.

There’s another group of people, however, who don’t see assisted suicide as violating the Hippocratic oath. The Hippocratic oath states that a doctor will improve the quality of a patients life. If a patient wants to end their life because they are suffering and a doctor doesn’t assist in it, then they are allowing a patient to suffer instead of improving their quality of life.

The medication used to assist in suicide may create a painless, almost perfect death, but nothing is 100% perfect. One reason a lot of people are against assisted suicide is because there have been a number of times when the lethal medicine didn’t work. One set of data shows that out of 1,186 Oregon residents who decided to take the lethal drug, seven of them regained consciousness, and one of them never actually died.

A lot of times, however, a patient is willing to take the slight risk of the lethal medication not working in order to reduce the financial burden for family members. For an individual to die in a hospital, naturally, around medical professionals, it could cost about $26,000. The drug used under the Death with Dignity Laws, known as Secobarbital, costs around $3,000-$5,000. Now that price is no walk in the park, but it is a lot better than paying close to $30,000 to suffer for an undisclosed amount of time.

Since its passing, assisted suicide is slowly spreading across the country. This may be something that interests you, or it may be something that interests someone close to you. Whether you agree with it or not, it’s always important to know your options so you can have the ultimate control all the way up to the end of your life.