Physician Assisted Suicide
Murder is considered to be one of the most unforgivable and horrific crimes that a person could commit, but is physician assisted suicide murder? It involves taking the life of a fellow human being, but it is performed out of human compassion and it is agreed upon by the patient and fellow physicians. Countries where the practice is illegal consider this as murder, where countries where physician assisted suicide is legal consider it as an act of compassion, empathy, and as putting someone out of their misery. Physician Assisted Suicide is a very controversial issue as is every issue that involves the death of a fellow human being. Every day our bodies do everything it can to avoid death, from keeping our bodies at …show more content…
(Speak Up Ontario, 2016) The patient expresses their wishes to this substitute decision maker including what they wish to have done in the unfortunate circumstance that their heart stops beating, if they would like to have any life-saving procedures performed on them. This substitute decision marker allows an individual to express predetermined wishes and decisions about their life and if they wish to be allowed to die naturally or wish to be resuscitated. Death itself is divided into two categories, clinical death and biological death. Clinical death is defined as the moment when the heart stops beating and the individual stops breathing. Many organs (such as the eyes and kidneys) are still viable for transplantation as these tissues are still alive. However, biological death occurs after clinical death but when tissues are no longer alive or viable. (Agarwal, 2012) Human life can only be brought back in the short period of clinical death. The U.S. National Library of Medicine states that, “Permanent brain damage begins after only 4 minutes without oxygen, and death can occur as soon as 4 - 6 minutes later.” (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2016, Para. 4) While in hospital if your heart ceases to beat then medical procedures that would restart your heart (such as CPR or defibrillation) would not be performed letting you fall quickly from clinical death into biological death. So does declaring that you do not wish to be resuscitated categorize as physician assisted dying? Technically, no, because the physician is not assisting in your death but merely standing aside and not interfering with its natural process. However, it can be argued that because the physician,
Murder is considered to be one of the most unforgivable and horrific crimes that a person could commit, but is physician assisted suicide murder? It involves taking the life of a fellow human being, but it is performed out of human compassion and it is agreed upon by the patient and fellow physicians. Countries where the practice is illegal consider this as murder, where countries where physician assisted suicide is legal consider it as an act of compassion, empathy, and as putting someone out of their misery. Physician Assisted Suicide is a very controversial issue as is every issue that involves the death of a fellow human being. Every day our bodies do everything it can to avoid death, from keeping our bodies at …show more content…
(Speak Up Ontario, 2016) The patient expresses their wishes to this substitute decision maker including what they wish to have done in the unfortunate circumstance that their heart stops beating, if they would like to have any life-saving procedures performed on them. This substitute decision marker allows an individual to express predetermined wishes and decisions about their life and if they wish to be allowed to die naturally or wish to be resuscitated. Death itself is divided into two categories, clinical death and biological death. Clinical death is defined as the moment when the heart stops beating and the individual stops breathing. Many organs (such as the eyes and kidneys) are still viable for transplantation as these tissues are still alive. However, biological death occurs after clinical death but when tissues are no longer alive or viable. (Agarwal, 2012) Human life can only be brought back in the short period of clinical death. The U.S. National Library of Medicine states that, “Permanent brain damage begins after only 4 minutes without oxygen, and death can occur as soon as 4 - 6 minutes later.” (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2016, Para. 4) While in hospital if your heart ceases to beat then medical procedures that would restart your heart (such as CPR or defibrillation) would not be performed letting you fall quickly from clinical death into biological death. So does declaring that you do not wish to be resuscitated categorize as physician assisted dying? Technically, no, because the physician is not assisting in your death but merely standing aside and not interfering with its natural process. However, it can be argued that because the physician,