Imagine being 29 years old, recently married and graduated, trying for your first child. Then, you start getting migraines. Shortly thereafter these “migraines” become migraines on steroids. Your headaches are so strong and last so long you cannot function properly for the day(s) following them. On 2014’s New Year’s eve, a day of celebration and hope for the future, you are diagnosed with brain cancer. Instead of “eating healthier”, or “doing random acts of kindness” type notes filling your New Year’s Resolution page, you’re filling in a bucket list. Nine days later, you have two surgeries in the same afternoon just to stop the tumor growth. Then for three months you wait. You have to invest every little ounce of energy your body has left to muster up after fighting the disease into hope. Hope of making it to 2015. 3 months later, in April, you are given 6 months to live, and prescribed full brain radiation. The side effects leave your “hair singed off, scalp covered in first-degree burns, and a life quality that is extremely low” (Maynard 4). From here you have two options, the first is to fight for your life against the cancer, the treatment, and the quality of life you would receive, all for hope that the cancer will go away. Or, you could take a pill, fall asleep forever, and be at home with friends and family when it was time for them to go. This is what Brittany Maynard did on November 1, 2014 at her home in Portland, Oregon. She was surrounded by her friends and family when she took her last breath. Physician Assisted Suicide is the solution to problems in America such as the suffering of thousands of people, the horrible hospice and palliative care systems that are currently in place, and the furthering of medicine in America. 

Britttany Maynard’s death led to the first real conversations about Physician Assisted Suicide in America. This movement in America only ever had one “warrior”, a man named Jack Kevorkian. Jack Kevorkian was known to people as “Dr. Death”. Kevorkian was a physician from Michigan, and is believed to have helped over 100 patients end their lives, until eventually being convicted for the second degree murder of one of his patients. Although Kevorkian raised awareness for the issue, there was no positive until Brittany Maynard. Maynard was the opposite of Kevorkian, she was not a creepy old doctor. Rather, she was a beautiful, young, school teacher that the public could rally behind. After Maynard’s death was announced to the world, CBS This Morning did a special to commemorate her and also raised awareness for the legalization of Physician Assisted Suicide. A poll done during the special showed that 70% of the viewers supported the idea of Physician Assisted Suicide. For weeks after the topic was brought up on countless talk shows, in podcasts, and maybe even between friends in casual conversation. Although the match was lit, the fire never started. Soon Americans began to forget about the tragedy that is the story of Brittany Maynard. What about the tragedy that is the pain and suffering of thousands of Americans every single day? As a society it is time that Physician Assisted Suicide is no longer the problem, but that allowing so many people to suffer every single day is the true problem.

Physician Assisted Suicide is a problem for a few reasons, most being ethically. The biggest ethical problem surrounding this debate is that of the Hippocratic Oath. Medical Doctors are required to take an oath before they become M.D.’s and in the Oath, they say “If it is given to me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God” (Lasagna 4). Doctor’s would be playing at God if they could write prescriptions for medications that would have only the single purpose to kill someone. What are M.D.’s supposed to do when faced with this challenge? They have to either abide by the Oath they took, or take the risky chance of being shunned by the medical community for their decision to take part in the progression of medicine.

Like the Hippocratic Oath debate, another ethical problem surrounding Physician Assisted Suicide is that the Medical community believes there is always a solution to any disease, and that healing can always happen it’s just a matter of time before it is discovered. Medical doctors are supposed to hear and acknowledge the request to die, but never go through with it because it is their duty to find a cure. They take an Oath before becoming licensed to “apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures which are required avoiding those twin traps of overtreatment and therapeutic nihilism” (Lasagna 4). Some MDs, such as Guy Micco, believe that “our career and years of school/experience are all in hope to cure every person we come in contact with and if we write a prescription for them to die, we have given up on pursuing a cure should no longer be MD’s” (Jaret 6). These beliefs are shared by a majority of the medical community and is one of the main reasons Physician Assisted Suicide is ethically wrong. It directly opposes the very Oath MDs are sworn to take before receiving licensure. If there truly is a potential cure, then every MD should fight to discover it, and administer/share said cure as soon as they can. 

With that information presented, now what? Should we the people listen to the medical community because it is their specialty, their career, and laws they have created for our betterment? The answer is no. We should not listen to the Medical community because of these reasons. In the past laws have been changed, and so there’s no reason to not change these ones to help provide comfort to our fellow man or woman. Our lives are about doing what it takes to survive, but at what point does our body give up this desire? In the USA Constitution, we are given the right to life. A right is defined by Google as “a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something” meaning we have the right to live, but it’s an entitlement, not a requirement. We are not required to live.

Although most of the medical community opposes it, there are some medical doctors who continue to fight for Physician Assisted Suicide. For example, Dr. Hader Warraich believes that Physicians who oppose Physician Assisted suicide have “turned death into dying”, referring to the fact that without aid in death, dying can be a long, hard, depressing, and painful road to trek, only to end in death(3). In a clinic one of Dr. Warraich’s patients requested “if my heart stops doctor, just let me go” and after Warraich asked why, he responded with “there are worse states than death” (Warracih 1). How can you as a human let someone suffer like that? Should the human race accept that some people would like to give up their right to life when they are suffering? 

Furthermore, these suffering patients pain can become even more unbearable. Physician Assisted Suicide should be legalized due to the fact some patients who are going through intense pain treated by morphine can develop morphine dependency or morphine resistance. Morphine is taken in doses, and sometimes the human body will create a chemical that causes your brain to redefine pain. When this happens your entire body will ache and hurt immensely without the drug, and only feel normal if you have enough morphine in your system. Your body will constantly be in pain without it. Nobody wants to live through that, and for patients in need of constant morphine, most would rather die than fight. Morphine can also be resisted, in the same way that your body depends the drug, your body can become resistant to morphine when morphine creates a chemical reaction. This will cause you to always feel pain no matter what. Morphine is the strongest opiate offered to relieve pain, and if you become resistant to that, the pain you would feel every second of every day would be the worst feeling of your life. It is unfair to let anyone suffer for every breath, if they don’t want to suffer anymore, therefore Physician Assisted Suicide could provide these people comfort if these issues were to happen to them.

One of the bigger moral issues with Physician Assisted Suicide is a term in the name, “suicide”. Once, an Oregon senator, Ms. Julie McMurchie asked that we “refrain from using the term ‘suicide’ in this context, because it demeans that human and the memories loved ones have of them” (Specter 8). When you think of suicide, you think of someone killing themselves due to sadness, or by accidental/purposeful drug overdose. A physician is aiding in your death because you are under immense amounts of pain and living through a terrible quality of life. Instead of demeaning these people, and thinking of their passing as a suicide, we should celebrate them for everything they accomplished and who they were.

The term “suicide” when thinking of a loved one can wrench your guts, but what is even worse is a problem discovered in other countries. Mainly in the Netherlands, but not anywhere in the U.S., is that some M.D.s are euthanizing patients who are very ill and close to death even if that is not their desire. This is because they have slightly different laws allowing an M.D. to euthanize one these aforementioned patients. Although Oregon does not allow that, neither did these other countries at first. People fear that if Americans legalize Physician Assisted Suicide, one day it will allow physicians to euthanize patients who do not want to die yet, but would rather fight. Jonathan Imbody, a Senior Policy Analyst for the CMA, tells us a story of a man named Franz. Franz went for a routine check-up when he was told he had a terminal illness. Once his family was informed of the illness, Franz was given very little time to live by the doctors. His family suggested euthanasia and after being pressured by his wife and daughter, Franz decided to be euthanized. But, when it came time for the procedure, Franz changed his mind. He called out “I don’t want to die”, and yet the M.D. proceeded with the lethal injections and killed Franz (Specter 13). This is a power M.D.s should not be given. Choosing when it is someone’s time to die is not their choice, but the choice of the person whose life will be taken. 

Instead of M.D.’s choosing when someone’s life should end, the patients should make the choice. Judith Dunning, an oral historian at Cal-Berkeley, was losing her ability to speak due to brain cancer. She made a video expressing her desire to die when she could no longer speak. As the brain cancer progressed Judith fought, but when her time came, she was happy to let her life end. In her videos she said she felt she had accomplished everything she wanted to. Judith was content with her life, and when she lost her voice, she did end her life. (Emmanuel 2). Why should someone whose entire life’s work and livelihood is taken away due to a terminally debilitating disease be forced to grind out through every single day? Judith lived the way she wanted to, and died the way she wanted to, and this option should be available to everyone who wants to take advantage of it.

Taking someone’s life is horrible, but so is the state of America’s awful palliative care and hospice programs. In America an “estimated 40-70% of patients die in pain, another 50-60% die feeling short-of-breath; 90% of nursing homes are grossly understaffed” (Morrow 7). There is an incredible number of patients who are suffering as they are dying. The sickly, and older communities are forced to live through what could be hell on earth for them because of all the problems surrounding the nursing home/hospice industry. Physician Assisted Suicide could cut the number of suffering to much lower by giving these people the option to end their suffering. Our palliative care would also greatly increase due to less patients choosing to live through the pain, thus allowing a lot less patients to experience pain and suffering leading up to death.

Furthermore, in the three states that have legalized Physician Assisted Suicide, there are some very astounding stats that were found… such as “86% of patients reported a decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable, 100% reported loss of autonomy, and 86% reported loss of dignity. Also, 62% of the patients who requested Physician Assisted Suicide followed through with taking the prescription” (Morrow 18). This means 86% of people could not do certain activities that helped them enjoy their daily life. 100% of these patients reported the loss of control to part of their bodies, and another 86% lost their dignity. The majority of people who requested Physician Assisted Suicide are not able to live the way they desire to, and their quality of life decreases more every day. These are the kinds of people Physician Assisted Suicide is supposed to help. It is meant to let people die comfortably, and content.  

The decision to end your own life should be strictly yours if you’re terminally ill and dying. It does not harm anyone else, and allows you to die on your own terms in the sanctity of your own home. Although many arguments have been made against Physician Assisted Suicide, the pros far outweigh the cons. It is time that Americans allow their people die on their own terms, comfortably. 
