What Is Euthanasia Or Physician Assisted Suicide?

If you could choose where and how you died, would you? Over the years, modern medicine has taken great steps to improve the health and well being of people world wide. People are now living better and longer than ever before. However, having these amenities comes with consequence. People with long term diseases and terminal illnesses are living longer and are also dying slower. Euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide are options that patients with terminal illnesses and long term disease may consider (Mihaela, 2012). Euthanasia is defined as “the act of putting to death painlessly or allowing to die, as by withholding extreme medical measures, a person or animal from suffering form an incurable, especially a painful, disease or condition” …show more content…
For example, people give up the right to speed while driving in order to protect pedestrians and other driver. However, why must people who are sick relinquish their right to decide when they are ready to stop suffering? Euthanasia allows patients with chronic diseases and illnesses to “die with dignity” which gives and already suffering person the right to decide when they are ready to succumb to their disease (Mihaela,2012). People deserve the right to choose when they are ready to die. However tragic a death is, the patient should still have the option to chose how and when they die. In fact, “Of the 988 terminally ill patients, a total of 60.2% supported euthanasia or PAS” when surveyed (Emanuel, Fairclough, Emanuel). Although few of the patients surveyed will actually choose to end their own life, the majority of them believe that euthanasia is a basic human right. Death is not some thing that should be belittled, but neither is a person’s happiness. If a suffering patients is unhappy and ready to final move past their disease, then said person should have the legal right to take their life into their own