Erica Brown (Edison) Physician Assisted Suicide

Remember Dr. Jack Kevorkian? Maybe you know him as Dr. Death. He put the debate over Physician Assisted Suicide and the right to die in the national spotlight. Just in case you don’t know who he is here’s a brief bio:

Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been known as “Dr. Death” since at least 1956, when he conducted a study photographing patients’ eyes as they died. Results established that blood vessels in the cornea contract and become invisible as the heart stops beating. In a 1958 paper, he suggested that death row inmates be euthanized, and their bodily organs harvested. In 1960, he proposed using condemned prisoners for medical experiments.

In 1989, a quadriplegic, too handicapped to kill himself, publicly asked for assistance, and Dr. Kevorkian began tinkering on a suicide machine. But a different patient — Janet Adkins, a 54-year-old with Alzheimer’s — was the first to test the device. It worked. Kevorkian then provided services to at least 45 and possibly more satisfied customers.

In 1997, however, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Americans who want to kill themselves — but are physically unable to do so — have no Constitutional right to end their lives. Kevorkian was sentenced to 10-25 years in prison, but was paroled in 2007, in failing health and nearing his own death.

There are two sides to this debate. Supporters claim that patients who are terminally ill and in severe pain can die with dignity. They administer the drugs themselves and die with limited pain and suffering. Opponents have several reasons for objecting. They claim that making an accurate terminal diagnosis can be difficult and the patient could beat the odds and survive; there are other underlying issues like depression that affect a person’s decision making; if the patients were treated better for pain they would suffer less and not want to die; finally that assisted suicide is a means of disposing of the elderly population.

In Oregon, it was made legal and contrary to the opponents beliefs, patient care and pain management has improved and hospice care has increased. The details of the law are below:

A terminally ill patient must obtain a terminal diagnosis from at least two physicians who declare that the patient has six months or less to live. The patient must be evaluated for depression and meet other qualifications. If the request is approved, the patient must wait a minimum of two weeks before becoming eligible to receive the lethal prescription.

Although the physician-assisted suicide law has seen limited use since its implementation, it has had an unexpected consequence. The debate over the law has forced medical professionals to reevaluate pain treatment in Oregon. Physicians are more willing to prescribe pain medications, and the number and quality of hospice care facilities has rapidly increased.
Read more: http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/CliffsReviewTopic/Euthanasia-The-Right-to-Die.topicArticleId-26957,articleId-26941.html#ixzz0Xv6yS4Vt

Maybe the facilities don’t want to be the ones clearly responsible for signing off on someone’s death.

Lately, with all the debate the health care  overhaul has sparked some have to wonder do terminally ill people have the right to request their own death?

This entry was posted on 26. November 2009 at 02:24 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.