Essay, Research Paper: Doctor Assisted Suicide

D.A.S Murder, death, suffering. All these horrific terms are related to an extremely important and devastating issue. Doctor assisted suicide is a very important subject that many people know little about. We need to finally shut this murdering out of Oregon for good. There are two sides concerning doctor assisted suicide. Those who oppose of measure 51, which would allow euthanasia, and those who are in favor of shutting it out. The people who are in favor of euthanasia, must have no sympathy for the many people who have to live with a fatal disease every day. Many people believe that when someone is given the lethal drugs, they peacefully slip away, into a death coma. This is absolutely not true. 25% of suicides under measure 51 fail. The medications can lead to convulsions, vomiting, aspiration pneumonia, brain damage, increased suffering, and a lingering death. In some cases, up to 100 pills had to be taken, and if it still it still didn t work, then lethal injection was the next step. In many cases where pills failed to work, the only hope was to suffocate the patient using a plastic bag. Other people believe that someone who has a terminally ill disease, that causes a lot of pain. Should be able to end their lives. This seems fairly reasonable, but it s not. The oral medication can lead to more pain that the patient was first experiencing. And what if the patient couldn t make the decision for themselves and a family member made it for them. Then someone is playing god and deciding when a person should leave this earth. If we don t stop euthanasia, then who will stop innocent people from dying? The pills prescribed for a patient don t work 20 to 80 percent of the time. So why would someone inflict more pain on themselves to try to get rid of the pain. The most effective death medicine are the old-fashioned sleeping pills, which have to be swallowed rapidly and kept down in large amounts to cause death. Most terminally ill patients have trouble keeping food and medicines down. So methods like this almost always fail.
Another reason that euthanasia is opposed, is because a diagnosis of a terminal illness might not be correct due to physician or lab error. And if this person chooses to end their lives because they believe they have a disease they really don t. Then the doctor would be at fault, and an innocent person would have died. In some cases, health insurance agencies have to pay ten of thousands of dollars to keep people alive. Under measure 51, the agency could negotiate a settlement with the family, if they agreed to kill the patient. Another instance would be if a terminally ill patient had a wealthy estate and will, and the family was paying for his medical bills to keep him alive. Then they might decide to end this persons life because they were tired of paying bills and greedy to collect the will and estate. There is not 1 good reason in favor of keeping measure 51 alive. We need to shut it out for good, before innocent people, and people who aren t ready to die, die a slow and painful death due to flaws in procedures. So do the right thing, and tell your parents to vote yes on measure 51 to get rid of euthanasia.