Assisted Suicide Vs Active Euthanasia

Assisted suicide or euthanasia has been contemplated by many medical personnel for years. Have you ever seen someone laying in the hospital, in so much pain there’s no way out of it. There’s no getting better, only worse. The doctors say it isn’t good, and that they’re in too much pain for the medicine to help much-they’ve done all that they can do. Where do you turn? Your last hope is the DNR (Do Not Resuscitate). Leaving them writhing in pain for days, weeks, and even months. They want it all to end, they cry and they plead because they do not have the strength themselves. What would you do? "We always listen to the patient. We never tell a patient: 'This is what you have to do. You have no choice.' Yet at the moment when their life is
ending — when they say, 'I don’t want to live in this bed for the next three weeks waiting to die' — it's an odd change in the consent procedure. Suddenly they become wrong and we become right. That does not make sense to me. Dying should not be completely separate from everything else we do in medicine." (Shavelson, 2016)
Your only legal choice of a DNR is shown as: “Preparing for death has its own ritual. It requires many family meetings, innumerable phone calls, lots of reassurance, and a great deal of reinforcement. It is critical that the family and patient have easy and immediate access to a nurse and doctor, as well as proper documentation at home on the patient's wishes about resuscitation, including--and this is essential--an out-of-hospital DNR form”(Muller, 2005) The same rules should and would apply to euthanasia.
“Seventy-seven percent of the nurses reported that patients who received prescriptions for lethal medications were more fearful of loss of control over the circumstances of death than were

other hospice patients, whereas 8 percent reported that such patients were less fearful than other hospice patients. Sixty-two percent of the nurses said that patients who received prescriptions for lethal medications were more likely to be concerned about loss of independence than were other hospice patients, whereas 9 percent said that such patients were less concerned about loss of independence than were other hospice patients. Hospice social workers also reported that the desire to control the circumstances of death, the wish to die at home, loss of independence or fear of such loss, and loss of dignity or fear of such loss were the most important reasons for requesting prescriptions for lethal medications; the median score for all these reasons was 5 on the 1-to-5 scale. They ranked lack of social support and depression as the least important reasons; the median score for both was 1.” (procon.org, 2008) This shows the patient's fear of how they will end up. They want to die on their terms, and only theirs; they do not want to be a living vegetable with no emotions or life.
With the ongoing debate on the lethal injection process of death row inmates-people have started to second guess the safety and general smooth passing on of assisted suicides. A quote from the Royal Dutch Society for the Advancement of Pharmacy explains how the drugs are used and how they work. “A clear general conclusion may be drawn as concerns the lethal action of the euthanasic agents recommended by the KNMP's [Royal Dutch Society for the Advancement of Pharmacy] Task Force: the administration of thiopental [a drug that causes unconsciousness] followed by a muscle relaxant--provided the latter is properly administered--causes immediate death without any problems. Intravenous administration is the most reliable and rapid way to accomplish euthanasia and therefore can be safely recommended."

(Royal, 1994) Though people have been found to wake up or have side effects such as gasping, ex. . This is only seen in cases when the drug is administered orally, not intravenously and if it is administered improperly.
There are currently three types of this dying method: Passive Euthanasia, Physician Assisted Suicide, and active Euthanasia.
Passive is the act of withdrawing from treatment intentionally, resulting in death. Active Euthanasia is when the patient is given an overdose of medicine to kill them, exc. The difference between these two is the act of omission versus the act of treating to kill. Finally we have Physician Assisted Suicide, which is a doctor counseling them and helping them with a painless death. "Euthanasia involves a death that is intended (not merely foreseen) in order to benefit the person who dies. It differs from physician-assisted suicide undertaken in the interest of the person who dies partly in that it involves a final act or omission by someone other than the patient (e.g., the doctor) in order to end the patient's life.... In active euthanasia, the doctor introduces the cause of the patient's death, e.g., a lethal injection.... Active physician-assisted suicide can involve, for example, the provision of means of death, like pills, that a patient may use. However, it might also involve giving the patient a stimulant to keep him awake so that he can shoot himself. That is, the active assistance need not involve giving a lethal substance." (Kamm,
2009) As you can tell there are many different facts that go into play.
This causes ethical, and religious conflicts all across the board. People’s general personal feelings do not matter-the law does. There are no federal laws about euthanasia currently but being said the act is prohibited under general homicide laws, these matters are usually handled at the state level, not the national.

The most famous advocate for euthanasia was Doctor Kevorkian; he was a pathologist, activist, painter, author, composer, and instrumentalist. Born in a small town in Michigan, young boy would soon turn into the infamous Doctor Death. During his medical career he worked and studied at Henry Ford Hospital, the University of Michigan Medical Center, and the Saratogan
General Hospital. His whole adult life was devoted to creating a painless death to terminally ill patients. Shortly before his death he made a claim to have helped at least 130 terminally ill patients commit
suicide.