There are two ways to terminate a person’s life upon request. By convention, euthanasia entails a doctor deliberately giving the patient a lethal dosage of appropriate medicine (Mroz et al., 2021). Conversely, in assisted suicide, a doctor fills a deadly prescription at the request of a capable patient with the intention that the person will take the drugs to end their life. In essence, while euthanasia involves another party administering the lethal substance, assisted suicide involves the person taking it. Before taking this course, I believed that some things should not be done to patients.
Notably, the law has indicated that we should not kill, and physicians have sworn never to inflict death on a patient. Therefore, I could not agree with euthanasia and assisted suicide proponents spearheading the debate about its vast legalization. Notably, I will categorically acknowledge that this point of view has changed to one that understands the arguments supporting the practice of euthanasia and assisted suicide.
Personal Support for Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia
My extensive interactions with this course played a huge role in understanding how an end-of-life decision is one of the most challenging choices an individual has to make. Reducing suffering, improving quality of life up until death, and providing consolation in death are the objectives of care given to terminally ill patients (Mroz et al., 2021). However, fulfilling these objectives can be complicated. It is ethically challenging to provide end-of-life care because doctors, patients, and their families must weigh numerous treatment alternatives, such as whether to employ medical technology to extend a person’s life or let the natural death process occur. To tackle the issues that arise in end-of-life care, doctors and their patients must comprehend the guiding principles of biomedical ethics, including the rights awarded to patients.
One of the rights awarded to patients that gave them the liberty to choose between euthanasia and assisted suicide is the right to autonomy. Understanding that end-of-life decisions are a component of a patient expressing their right to autonomy is one of the things that led me to rethink this. Patient autonomy has been one of the guiding principles in medical practice (Snyder Sulmasy et al., 2017). Following a full explanation of the risks and advantages of healthcare providers, autonomy refers to the process by which patients choose their preferred medical interventions.
The concept of informed consent is used to implement respect for autonomy in legal and practical contexts. It stipulates, among other things, that the patient be fully informed of all dangers, advantages, and possible advantages of the suggested procedure and any workable alternatives. As a result, the patient must be provided with palliative care that is entirely adequate to get legally acceptable informed consent for euthanasia or assisted suicide. The patient must also be mentally competent in law and fact, and their consent must be freely given without compulsion, pressure, or undue influence. Healthcare personnel will then respect the patient’s autonomy by acting following the patient’s preferences.
It is also prudent for society to acknowledge that death will always be an inevitable part of life for humans. Death can be sped up or momentarily postponed, but it can never be stopped because it is innate to the human body and is fragile and inevitably aging. Death is an unmistakable, inevitable, unavoidable, and universal occurrence that applies to all living things. No one has a “right to die.” while the fundamental human rights to “life, liberty, and security of the person” do exist.
If there were a “right to die,” it would follow logically that someone else or their agent would have a duty to cause death since where there is a right, there is an obligation, especially if the requisitioner were physically incapable of accomplishing the act themselves. To this effect, the acknowledgment of assisted suicide and euthanasia stems from the understanding that some circumstances will show beyond doubt that death will remain the outcome. Therefore, there would be no need for a patient to suffer through the illness, yet the possibility of returning to their everyday lives is next to impossible. Euthanasia or assisted suicide are alternatives to reducing the burden on the family and patient.
The Difference Between Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide
Euthanasia and assisted suicide are two different types of assisted dying. In general, assisted suicide is when a person has been prescribed drugs that they must take themselves to die. In contrast, euthanasia describes when the person asks for assistance to die, and someone else takes action leading to their unnatural death, such as injecting a lethal drug. Technically, euthanasia occurs when the attending physician or nurse practitioner intentionally puts down a patient.
Typically, a fatal injection is used for this. When a person actively attempts suicide with the help of the attending physician or nurse practitioner and self-administers the medicine, this is considered assisted suicide. The patient will typically be prescribed a fatal medication to take orally. Notably, the two are self-willed deaths, and even when the means are different, the intention to cause death is present in both scenarios. Euthanasia is self-willed and other-inflicted, while assisted suicide is self-willed and self-inflicted.
Support for the Two Types of Assisted Dying
As I read through this information and learned more about assisted suicide and euthanasia, I could not help but wonder why I had previously believed that assisted suicide was worse than euthanasia. As an advocate for euthanasia, I asserted that patients should have the freedom to live as they choose and end their lives when they please. Mercy-killing proponents contend that letting patients die in vegetative states with no chance of recovery eliminates further unnecessary and pointless medical interventions. Killing them would stop any more misery if they were already experiencing it. Conversely, assisted suicide entails offering assistance to a suffering or terminally ill patient; a doctor only facilitates the patient’s desire to pass away with dignity.
I initially thought letting someone die was less dreadful than killing them. This is morality that makes sense. We consistently oppose killing an innocent person, even though we do not always condemn letting someone die. One way to put this into practice is to say that letting a neighbor die in an accident is dreadful when we could have easily saved their life by calling 911. Conversely, if someone had murdered a neighbor, we would consider it to be wrong.
Similarly, it is common to condemn a doctor who killed a patient. However, we could be prepared to accept a doctor who refuses to administer artificial life support at the request of a suffering, terminally sick patient and their family. Notably, I currently acknowledge that the outcome from these two options, that is whether a patient is deliberately given the lethal substance or let to die through assisted suicide, the outcome is the same.
Death is the undoubted outcome of euthanasia and assisted suicide. Therefore, whether euthanasia or assisted suicide comes to play, these end-of-life decisions and actions are all part of healthcare delivery. Healthcare professionals fully understand the risks, degree of sickness, or recovery possibilities. As long as the patient is provided with all the relevant information to these decisions, I support euthanasia and assisted suicide equally and fully.
References
Mroz, S., Dierickx, S., Deliens, L., Cohen, J., & Chambaere, K. (2021). Assisted dying around the world: A status question. Annals of Palliative Medicine, 10(3), 3540-3553. Web.
Snyder Sulmasy, L., Mueller, P. S., & Ethics, Professionalism and Human Rights Committee of the American College of Physicians. (2017). Ethics and the legalization of physician-assisted suicide: An American College of Physicians position paper. Annals of Internal Medicine, 167(8), 576–578. Web.