The Problem Isn’t Pain

Today, many terminally ill patients are searching for a way to end the suffering and agony that controls every facet of their lives. The recent controversial answer has been physician assisted suicide, or “death with dignity.” Death with dignity allows for a terminally ill patient to end their lives before their ailment reaches a more serious, even more debilitating state. Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, and end stage cancer are all terminal diseases that cannot easily be stopped. Death with dignity is a completely humane process and has a overwhelmingly positive effect for all involved. Unfortunately, some believe that physician assisted dying is morally wrong.

Mary E. Harned, the author of The Dangers of Assisted Suicide, and staff counselor of the Americans United for Live organization is one of those people. Harned provides us with two definitions: physician assisted suicide, “specifically involves the help of a physician in performing the act of suicide. Such assistance usually entails the prescribing or dispensing of controlled substances in lethal quantities that hasten death.” While euthanasia “involves the killing of one person by or with the physical assistance”

Those who support death with dignity simply believe that suffering isn’t humane, and something should be implemented to prevent end of life suffering. Even accepted and successful movements, such as Animal Rights Activists believe in this simple principle as well. Very telling is her belief that the reason people choose a death with dignity is because the pain is too much to handle. It’s fair to say that nearly everybody knows that even the most severe pain can be relieved by drugs. Doctors can prescribe anyone with pain some sort of medication to ease the pain, but those painkillers don’t change the fact that the patient still has stage four lung cancer and is going to die within the next two weeks anyway. The reason so many people turn to death with dignity is so that in their dying minutes they are not so heavily sedated by painkillers that they can’t even function, or hooked up to five different life support machines as they lie lifeless on a hospice bed, but so that they can have some sense of dignity,  feel surrounded with compassion from family members, and end the suffering that comes with their ailment. A sense of control is extremely important for somebody who, if not given complete control of their end of life choices, will have no power and control over it at all. The power to end ones life if death is extremely close to begin with is imperative to showing our compassion and understanding.

The strongest counter-argument is that Physician Assisted Suicide is something that will be abused by doctors. Perhaps that is a valid fear in today’s corrupt society, but there is nothing here that can be abused. If a people want to end their lives, that in no way advances the best interest of doctors or healthcare professionals. It actually takes revenue away from them, by hastening death one would also hasten, and lessen the hospital bills. So, why is letting this important decision of terminally ill patients to end their lives go opposed? Laws are in place that enforce everyone to have some sort of healthcare. If our nation can successfully do that, we can successfully create a sound set of laws that allow for a dying patient to hasten their death.

Works Cited

“Assisted Suicide: 1. America.” BMJ: British Medical Journal 303.6800 (1991): 431. Web.http://www.aul.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/dangers-assisted-suicide.pdf