Question

1. What ethical principles do you think are involved in Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia and why?
2. What conditions, in your mind, should be met for Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia to be an option?
3. In a case study, Brittany Maynard suffered from stage four brain cancer and was only given six months to live. With this, she suffered many symptoms such as stroke-like symptoms, seizures and severe head and neck pain which had severely decreased her quality of life. If you were the physician in charge of her case, would you consider Euthanasia or Physician Assisted Suicide as a potential option?

Answer 1

Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) refers to the prescription of lethal medication to be voluntarily self-administered by the patient. Euthanasia refers to deliberate, direct causation of death by a physician. It is important to distinguish between voluntary euthanasia, involuntary euthanasia, and non-voluntary euthanasia. Physician-assisted death (PAD) involves the practice where a physician provides a potentially lethal medication to a terminally ill, suffering patient at his request that he can take (or not) at a time of his own choosing to end his life. It is also called physician-assisted suicide, physician aid-in-dying, and patient administered hastened death.

Most terminally ill patients who wish to commit suicide want to do so by medical means, non-violently, out of respect for themselves and others. Yet medical suicide is not easy to accomplish; dosage and timing of drug administration matter critically, especially if the drug is taken orally, and failed attempts can cause greater trauma than death itself for the patient and caregivers. Patients may beg caregivers to complete their failed attempt at dying. These circumstances and possible consequences convince some physicians that helping a patient who is determined to end his or her life prevents greater harm than it causes. Moreover, some believe that ending, at a patient's request, the physical pain and mental anguish from which that patient will not recover does not violate the spirit or goals of medical ethics.

Ethical principles involved in Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia:

-There are many services physicians can provide a patient who asks for assistance in dying without violating professional ethics or personal beliefs. First, they must confront the task of presenting the most accurate prognosis. This is a difficult but critical task that only the physician can perform. It demands skill, experience, and courage.

-Next, physicians must carefully describe all possible treatment and palliative care options to the patient and discuss what he or she can expect as consequences of each of those care options, as well as the consequences of accepting no treatment or care.

-Physicians should maintain their relationship with the patient, no matter what course the patient finally chooses, short of participating in suicide, if that is the patient's ultimate choice.

-Physicians can also play a role in referring terminally ill patients to other psychiatrists, hospice workers, clergy who can evaluate their mental status and help them consider end-of-life decisions.

Conditions to be met for Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

· Physicians are best equipped among health care professionals to determine the patient's diagnosis, prognosis, and the full range of treatment options.

· The physician must be satisfied that the patient's request is voluntary as well considered.

· The patient should be informed about the situation and prognosis.

· The physician should be satisfied that the patient sufferings are unbearable with no scope of improvement.

· The patient should have a good discussion with the physician that there are no reasonable alternatives in the patient’s situation.

· The physician should provide all appropriate reports to the higher authority.

If I would be the physician in charge of Brittany Maynard, who is suffering from stage four brain cancer, I would have not considered Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide as a potential option. Being a physician I will always try my best to keep the patient survive.

In the context of the provision of healthcare, and in the treatment of patients at the end of life, we hold that it is unethical for a healthcare professional to intentionally end a patient’s life because such an act runs counter to what we believe to be the moral foundation of medicine: the incalculable and intrinsic worth of the human person. Medicine derives its moral greatness from its respect for the value of each individual, a value that transcends circumstance or preference. This value derives from a person’s status as a sentient and rational beings capable of morally significant choices.

Permitting killing out of “respect for preferences” renders the value of one’s person contingent upon those preferences. Importantly, the value of a person is not diminished even when that person thinks that her life is unworthy of living. A willingness to deliberately cause a person to become a non-person is deeply subversive to medical ethics because it renders the value of a person a matter of mere judgment. Put simply, a person is necessarily more important than her preferences, for her intrinsic value is the foundation of respect for her preferences. The wrongness of deliberately causing death lies in the value of the person himself. The deliberate act of ending a life makes a “somebody” into a “nobody

Actively involving physicians in the act of killing irrevocably breaks the certainty of trust long held as the core of the patient-physician covenant. We conclude that it is unethical intentionally to cause death because it constitutes a profound violation of the intrinsic and incalculable worth of a person.