Physician Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia stance (reference book: Being Mortal:

Medicine and What Matters Most in the End )

PAS-patient administers lethal dose themselves with the assistance of a
physician
Euthanasia- physician adminsters lethal dose to a non responsive patient

This is a difficult question as I believe it forces one to come to grips with the
foundational role of a physician. Is a physician's role to prolong and preserve
life or is it to alleviate suffering.
Proponents of PAS/E will argue that:
1) a Patient has a right to self-determination, and denying them their
own right to
request any treatment they want is denying them this
right
-while this may be true in the negative sense (a patient has the
right to refuse
treatment and be left alone, it does not
extend to the posititve. A patient does
not have the right to
request any treatment. This is precisely why we have laws
regulating prescription drugs. Under this thinking, one would have to
justify a
patient's denial to buy any drugs they please.

2) The compassionate argument

-first of all, the word compassion means to "suffer together" or
"suffer with"
not necessarily to end someone's suffering,
so I believe that refusing PAS/E is
not a indication that one
lacks compassion toward another individual. In this
case, I
believe a physicians role extends to alleviate pain--which I would
advocate palliative care

3) It is working in other areas

-The data on these claims is bothersome as statstics show a
incresingly higher
rate by which patients go immediately to
PAS/E rather than trying out paliative
care. Secondly, the
"Dutch experiment" seems to show more or less being a
failed
experiment as many patients are denied PAS/E.. highlighting physician
autonomy rather than patient autonomy

Arguments against use of PAS/E

1) The heart of medicine is healing. Doctors cannot heal patients by
assisting to kill
them. Doctors seek to eliminate and alleviate the
pain from sickness and disease, this
does not mean that a doctor can
achieve this goal by killing the patient. Allowing PAS/E
fundamentally
corrupts the defining goal of the profession--to heal
2) Threatens the physician-patient relationship. Patients may not trust
their own
physicians if they are unsure what the doctors intentions may
be. If the fundamental
role of a physician is unclear, how can one expect a
patient to trust their physician?