Physician Aided Suicide Essay

Physician aided suicide refers to activities done by doctors to assist their patients to voluntary terminate their own lives. This assistance involves providing information or the means that will terminate the patient‘s life. However, it is the patient who performs the act. Physician aided suicides continue to elicit public debates globally. The debates centre on moral, religious, legal and ethical perspectives of the issue. It is on these grounds that I base my arguments. Physician aided suicide should be illegalized.
Physician aided suicide goes against medical ethics. The Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians before they begin their practice as physicians expressly forbids giving medicine that is deadly to anyone even upon their request.
All religions regard life as sacred. It is God who grants life and only he should decide on the place and time a person will die. Physician aided suicide is a moral issue and it should be decided on principles of wrong or right as dictated by religion. Intervening by hastening a patient’s death is challenging God’s authority of deciding the place and time of a person’s death.
A physician helping his or her patient to commit suicide undermines the trust that exists between the doctors and their patients. When we go to hospitals we trust that doctors will do the best for us .We expect doctors to use their medical knowledge and experience to cure us and to do everything possible to preserve life. This trust will be breached if doctors kill at the request of their patients.
If physician aided suicide is legalized it would be a slippery slope. It may be abused to kill people who may be considered an inconvenience to their families. The elderly, the physically disabled, babies born with deformities and the poor will be at risk of being killed.
Patients request physicians to help them commit suicide when they are depressed or they are undergoing a change of mind. With the ever increasing causes of stress, this is not a remote possibility. People who are depressed are very erratic and pessimistic about life that they may see terminating their life as the only way out. However with proper counseling and time, depression is treatable.
Physicians may misdiagnose a patient. They are human and are therefore prone to make mistakes. Cases of professional negligence by doctors are not uncommon. There is a possibility that patients who have given up because they are not responding to treatment can be correctly diagnosed and recover. Physician aided suicide may also make doctors lazy. Knowing there is an easier way out, physicians may not work hard to ensure their patients survive when they are in the verge of death.
Those who support physician aided suicide often rely on individual rights and freedoms to base their arguments. However, it should be noted that individual independence is not absolute. The society does not allow individuals to do whatever they please even when the resulting consequences will affect them the most. The society does not permit people to sell themselves as slaves. People should therefore not be allowed the right to request other people to help them commit suicide.
The question about physician aided suicide has divided us for many decades. It has been legalized in some countries such as Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland and a few states in USA. However it remains illegal in most countries. I do not agree with physician aided suicide and it should not be permissible on any grounds.