What Is Physician Assisted Suicide?

I. Physician-assisted suicide, under various names and colloquial definitions, has been a documented ethical issue for centuries – not to mention an undocumented ethical issue since the hypothetical dawn of life. By common understanding, physician-assisted suicide is death either directly or indirectly permitted or carried out by a physician. In simple terms, an “out” is provided. For this reason, it is often associated with chronic pain or terminal illness. Suicide where the doctor in charge is directly involved is perhaps the first situation which comes to mind when one thinks of euthanasia. This includes cases such as those in which the physician injects the consenting patient with a lethal substance in order to end their life. While this is the most well-known of methods, it is (arguably) not the most common. Oftentimes, physicians will perform an assisted suicide indirectly, say, …show more content…
Any issue centered on life and death is inherently ethical. The very essence of sentience is life. It is life that allows us to communicate, flourish, develop, and think rationally. Life is something that we do not as for but are given anyway. For these reasons, life is often seen as the most sacred of all things. People – especially those of religious conscientiousness – are willing to fight by any means possible to protect it, even when it is not their own. This is why universal laws exist, and suicide is not taken on a case by case basis – which is closer to how it should be handled. The protection of life by any means necessary is, in itself, a paradox. Life is only life if it is worth living, and a life full of suffering is not life. Those who fight to protect life do not see this, however. They see any act of rebellion against the sanctity of life to be unjustified harm. While the end of life is indeed harm, it is not an unjustified harm. If one does not perform the necessary harm then worse agony will follow. This removes the quality, and therefore, validity of