Doctor Kevorkian and other so-called
"death doctors" should be permitted to assist in the premature deaths
of the terminally ill. Although many
states outlaw assisted suicides, nevertheless, they should by made legal for
terminally ill patients. These patients
may not want to suffer a long, painful death.
The terminally ill will not get well, they might decide to make the
decision of ending their life alone if they cannot receive proper help, and
assisted suicides may one day be useful in discovering how the human brain
works or perhaps find a cure to some fatal diseases.
First, the terminally ill patients will not get
better or become cured of the disease they have. According to many medical physicians the
expression "terminally ill" means being in the final stages of a disease
that is incurable (Hentoff, p.10). If a
person has a despairing disease such as AIDS, that person may not want to live
the rest of their short life with all the pain and frustration.
Next, the terminally ill might injure their
body even more by taking up the decision in their own hands. Offering help in assisted suicides to the
fatally ill would prevent anything like this from happening. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals created a
law that prohibited physicians from helping their patients die (Lemonick,
p.82). Now, patients who are terminally
ill and who wish to die might decide to kill themselves in a manner that is
less humane than with a lethal injection
or dosage of medicine. This new law
makes it much harder to get proper help in
attaining an
assisted suicide. This clearly would
cause many more problems than it would do good.
Last, there are many ways that using terminally
ill patients that can benefit science and the medical fields. Doctor Kevorkian has been advancing a
proposal to allow condemned criminals and terminally ill patients to perform
tests on their brains while they are still alive and willingly know they will
die soon afterward. Kevorkian claims
that these human experiments allow us to fully understand how the human body
functions. He also proposed to allow the
criminals who are condemned to donate their organs for transplant. (Hosenball,
p.28-29). Through studying on live
humans we would gain a much greater understanding of ourselves and possibly
discover some new medicinal drugs.
The terminally ill will not recover from their
disease, they might decide to unlawfully take their own life and possibly get
hurt severely in the process, and the experimentation on certain criminals and
mortally ill patients would aid in the development of new drugs. Allowing assisted suicides in our country
would be a great asset and opportunity for people who will not recover to end
all the suffering. The legalization of
assisted suicides would prevent many accidents from occurring such as people
committing the act of suicide and being unsuccessful. Legalizing aided suicides would also prevent
people from killing themselves illegally.
With all of the technological advances in our community today the
legalization of aided suicides is a must. For the sake of all humanity and
virtue in our society today, exercise your freedom of choice and look at
assisted suicides with a different, but, moral perspective.
Works Cited
Hentoff,
Nat. "From Assisted Suicides to
Euthanasia." Village Voice 14 May 1996:
p. 10
Hosenball,
Mark. "The Real Jack
Kevorkian." Newsweek 6 Dec. 1996:
p. 28-29
Lemonick,
Michael. "Defining the Right to
Die." Time 15 Apr. 1996:
p. 82
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