Argumentative Essay: Physician Assisted Suicide
Emma Chen
English 7HP
Sesky/Period 7
19 January 2014
The Right to Die Every day, you lie in bed in physical and mental anguish. You are caged inside of your body; you cannot perform simple tasks like feeding yourself or using the restroom. No matter how hard you try, you cannot move or talk. Almost everything you participate in during the day cannot be done without your assistant. You are completely conscious and awake, but you are paralyzed and unable to speak. This is how a person with Locked-in syndrome lives. Locked-in syndrome is a terminal illness that currently affects about 50,000 individuals in the United States alone. People who have this symptom and other incurable sicknesses may lose the desire to live. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) would help relieve a patient’s suffering. Physician-assisted suicide should be legalized for those who are terminally ill and/or no longer have the desire to live. One reason for allowing PAS is to help relieve a patient’s suffering. A patient with terminal illness goes through much unrelieved pain and agony both mentally and physically. In one study conducted in Europe in 2001 to 2002, patients who requested to …show more content…
In Oregon, about 673 people have already taken lethal medication. One case in Oregon that happened recently in 2014 is about a woman named Cody Curtis who suffered from cholangiocarcinoma cancer, which crippled her body and caused physical pain. She fought with this disease for two years until she could take it no longer. She asked her family if she could end her life, to which they agreed. After taking the lethal dose of drugs, right before she passed away, she told her family, “thank you”. Her parting words remind us of the suffering she went through, and how ending her life relieved her of the pain. Curtis no longer has to go through more years of torment and
English 7HP
Sesky/Period 7
19 January 2014
The Right to Die Every day, you lie in bed in physical and mental anguish. You are caged inside of your body; you cannot perform simple tasks like feeding yourself or using the restroom. No matter how hard you try, you cannot move or talk. Almost everything you participate in during the day cannot be done without your assistant. You are completely conscious and awake, but you are paralyzed and unable to speak. This is how a person with Locked-in syndrome lives. Locked-in syndrome is a terminal illness that currently affects about 50,000 individuals in the United States alone. People who have this symptom and other incurable sicknesses may lose the desire to live. Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) would help relieve a patient’s suffering. Physician-assisted suicide should be legalized for those who are terminally ill and/or no longer have the desire to live. One reason for allowing PAS is to help relieve a patient’s suffering. A patient with terminal illness goes through much unrelieved pain and agony both mentally and physically. In one study conducted in Europe in 2001 to 2002, patients who requested to …show more content…
In Oregon, about 673 people have already taken lethal medication. One case in Oregon that happened recently in 2014 is about a woman named Cody Curtis who suffered from cholangiocarcinoma cancer, which crippled her body and caused physical pain. She fought with this disease for two years until she could take it no longer. She asked her family if she could end her life, to which they agreed. After taking the lethal dose of drugs, right before she passed away, she told her family, “thank you”. Her parting words remind us of the suffering she went through, and how ending her life relieved her of the pain. Curtis no longer has to go through more years of torment and