Hippocratic Oath

Tochukwu Nwigwe East Los Angeles College Philosophy 19 Section 5407 Contemporary Issues in Bioethics Summer 2015 Jehovah Witness Belief and Patient Autonomy Last month I had a severe pain on the right left side of my abdomen that lasted for days because I had presumed that the pain will go away. The failure of my presumption prompted me to rush to Kaiser urgent care to seek medical opinion and verification of what was wrong with me. Based on my primary physician diagnosis, I was advised to go…

Physician-assisted suicide is not only morally justifiable, but it’s often the most humane option for terminally ill patients and those near death. To completely restrict all access to euthanesia is to prolong the suffering of individuals. European Declaration of Human Rights the right not to be forced to suffer. Physician-assisted suicide, or PAS, is the voluntary termination of one’s own life by administration of a lethal substance with direct or indirect assistance by a doctor or physician.…

Dieterle (2007) refers to this as, “the physician’s intent” and then goes on to say that an argument against physician assisted suicide is, “ Doctors should not kill; this is prohibited by the Hippocratic Oath. The physician is bound to save life, not take it” (p.138). This means that the doctor’s role should be to heal, not kill. Patients go to their doctor to get treatment and to get better and become healthy again. Many people argue that this should…

Life is foundationally good on its own. In modern predominant religions, life has been viewed as intrinsically good and worth preserving. Medical professionals and caregivers’ primary objectives are to provide quality health care and protect patients’ interests. In the case of Mark Chanko, a man who had his death filmed and then shown for others’ entertainment, his caregivers did not hold up their end, and violated his rights to privacy by allowing the filming without his, nor his family’s…

would lose limbs and fingers due to various machines such as the Spinning Jenny, and electricity also led to inhuman like working hours going up to almost 20 hours. It is natural that a medical observer would think this way as he is required by Hippocratic oaths to speak for the patients, and his medical background would lead to a good professional opinion. In an essay published by Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working class he discusses how the upper class exploits the working class.…

Commotion where there is no more motion, but there is a choice. According to Ryan T. Anderson the author of “Physician-Assisted Suicide is Always Wrong,” states that this upcoming proclamation is an ethical battle within our society. The main argument Anderson claims is that there is no base for such right to be implemented. There is no right way to kill someone, killing, especially coming from a health professional is going against the norm of centuries of helping to prolong life; give the body…

Euthanasia, also known as physician assisted suicide, is the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or irreversible coma. The term euthanasia comes from the Greek words, “eu” meaning good and “thanatosis” meaning death, which forms “Good Death”. Euthanasia’s first recorded use was by a Roman historian, Suetonius. It was used to describe the death of Augustus Caesar. Easy death has been applied to hopeless patients who have been suffering extreme pain.…

explains how modern medication, along with medical equipment designed to keep patients alive have made it nearly impossible for patients to die, unless doctors or family members withdraw treatment. He further explains how doctor’s adherence to the Hippocratic oath “do no harm” is used to advocate for keeping patients alive. He suggests that doctors may be doing harm by not allowing the patient the right to choose how they prefer to end their life. He believes that doctors should be open to…

Based on the 2014 Meat Atlas of the Friends of the Earth and the Heinrich Boll Foundation, there are a total of 375 million vegetarians worldwide. Starting way back to early history, vegetarian Greek and Roman philosophers such as Pythagoras, Plutarch, Seneca, and Porfirio followed a meatless diet (Figus, 2014). These people believed that slaughtering animals are against the animal’s rights and that a meatless diet is much better for one’s health. A vegetarian diet consists mostly of fruits and…

twenty-twenty and it is easy to cast a critical eye on those that came before us. Ethical standards are a relatively new concept born from the atrocities of Nazi experimentation during World War II. Prior to the Nuremberg Code, physicians had only the Hippocratic oath to guide them and oftentimes do no harm was set-aside in the quest for scientific knowledge. In spite of, or possibly because of controversial…