Imagine receiving a phone call from your doctor with the terrible news that you have a terminal illness. You then watch as the days pass by, everyday feeling slower and slower. Your hair falls off in knots, the skin irritation begins to become uncontrollable, the everlasting headaches that feel as if someone was repeatedly smacking your skull with a hammer never seem to go away. They worsen day by day and all you can wish for is for it all to end, but when telling others your wish of dying on your own terms, their looks given make it seem as if you were crazy. Would you not wish they accepted your decision and let you end the journey of life in a peaceful manner? Terminally ill people should be able to decide to die on their own terms because having that option may cause a sudden change of mind or it could end their pain quicker.
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It’s the person’s body and if that person is ill and wants to end their suffering quicker, they should be able to do so. After all, that person is the one dealing with the pain and not everyone else who is objecting the death on their own terms.
On the contrary, others might argue that terminally ill patients should not die on their own terms because it would affect the ethic of the doctor due to it going against the Hippocratic Oath. The Hippocratic Oath establishes guidelines for a physician’s practice of medicine (Lindh, Pooler, Tamparo, and Dahl). One promise the oath states will be made is that the doctor will never give a drug that could kill the patient if asked for it or give his/her opinion of it to the patient (Lindh, Pooler, Tamparo, and Dahl). But, do doctors actually follow this oath today? As stated by Brian Smith:
''Most doctors will recite the Hippocratic oath…Then they will look their patient in the eye and say, 'If you get really sick, I will provide the means necessary to stop the pain.' That's understood code around here. Everybody knows that enough morphine will kill you”
It’s the person’s body and if that person is ill and wants to end their suffering quicker, they should be able to do so. After all, that person is the one dealing with the pain and not everyone else who is objecting the death on their own terms.
On the contrary, others might argue that terminally ill patients should not die on their own terms because it would affect the ethic of the doctor due to it going against the Hippocratic Oath. The Hippocratic Oath establishes guidelines for a physician’s practice of medicine (Lindh, Pooler, Tamparo, and Dahl). One promise the oath states will be made is that the doctor will never give a drug that could kill the patient if asked for it or give his/her opinion of it to the patient (Lindh, Pooler, Tamparo, and Dahl). But, do doctors actually follow this oath today? As stated by Brian Smith:
''Most doctors will recite the Hippocratic oath…Then they will look their patient in the eye and say, 'If you get really sick, I will provide the means necessary to stop the pain.' That's understood code around here. Everybody knows that enough morphine will kill you”