Peter Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, believes we should. By portraying the story of Gillian Bennett, an old woman who suffered of dementia and decided to end her life this way, he demonstrates how the act of physician assisted suicide is not an unmoral choice. He believes it is a right for everyone to choose to end his or her life, rather than going through intolerable suffer.
On the other hand, Ilora Finlay, professor of palliative medicine and an Independent Crossbench member of the House of Lords, says we should not. Her view is that the few States that currently allow it show no prove of a correct procedure to ensure the patients well-being. She disagrees with the claim from a group called Dignity in Dying from Oregon. The group claims they haven’t had any abuse cases or reasons to extend the law; however, Finlay points out, “there are no arrangements in place to scrutinize how requests for assisted suicide are being handled” (Finlay 1). Finlay presents the fact that in Washington 2 out of 3 people have requested the pill because they feel they are a burden on others. …show more content…
She portrays this as a problem. Singer agrees on the fact that people may choose this path because they feel as a burden on others but he does not view it as a problem, rather he believes it is an ethical choice. He refers to Bennett and her words, “all I lose is an indefinite number of years of being a vegetable in a hospital setting, eating up the country’s money…” (Singer 2). He says this is ethical because Bennett thinking of the “country’s money”, means that she was not only thinking of herself. I agree with Singer’s suggestion that thinking of someone else rather than yourself is an ethical decision, and I don’t believe we should miss-interpret a selfless action like this as a problem, like Finlay otherwise states. What about depression? We know that many people who suffer depression wish to end their lives even though they are capable of living a healthy life. “We do know from research carried out in Oregon, that some people who have ended their lives with legally-supplied lethal drugs had been suffering from undiagnosed clinical depression” (Finlay 1). Finlay states this but provides no reference or depth to her claim. But, I would argue that many people who are terminally ill suffer from depression because of their disease, and even without depression they would still have the disease and go through pain. Singer mentions how Bennett was a great-grandmother who loved her family and would have loved to continue on living, but even so because of her disease she chose not to. He shows,