Physician Assisted Suicide Should Not Be Legalized Essay

In today’s society, giving up appears to be normal. When people are faced with struggles, they often choose the easiest course, running away from them. People should persist and overcome their bad situations. Society does not have enough fight left in it. One never knows how something could turn out. Physician-assisted suicide may not be easy, but it is a horrible choice. It is the act of a doctor prescribing lethal doses of drugs to alleviate one’s pain. A doctor’s job is to help someone live. It is not to help someone die. A doctor takes a hippocratic oath when they receive their license. By assisting someone in ending their life would violate that oath. Physician-assisted suicide should not be legalized.

Scientists have determined that the brain controls all pain. Pain is in one’s head, and emotions determine its severity. It may feel as if the pain is in one’s back, but it is really the circuits in the brain telling one that pain exists. One’s brain even has the capability to increase or decrease the pain, by paying more or less attention to it. This supports the idea
that people have different levels of pain tolerance, and tolerance can be learned. One study found that meditation is key to controlling the brain to improve or block pain.

A person’s past experience or fears or depression can have a bearing on the amount of pain felt. Psychological factors are more involved than usually suggested. These factors become valuable and quite important for future treatments. Mind over matter now applies. Miracles are often reported. For example, a doctor tells someone that they only have six months to live, yet that person is still living six years later.

The problem is not solely the pain or the illness. It is the vicious cycle started by the pain and the illness. That person loses functionality which causes reduced self-esteem, financial hardships, and possibly stressful relationships. Pain and lack of sleep may increase worries. More worries lead to more negative thoughts. Physical pain patients are rarely treated by psychiatrists or psychologists. Neither are terminally ill patients. Perhaps, if a better treatment program included both, patients would become more optimistic, could recover, and begin to function again. Life is a valuable thing. Every person enjoys their life at some point in time. Although tragedy occurs at the most inconvenient times, that is not a reason to end a life. No one knows what the future holds. The worst things often happen unexpectedly to the best people. Everyone has a different purpose in life, and they should want to fight to fulfill that purpose even if something goes wrong. Physician-assisted suicide should not be a person’s way out. Fighting through the pain one is faced with builds character. It helps one realize nothing is impossible if one does not give up. There is always hope that a cure for each disease could be discovered. A person never knows when or if those discoveries will take place, but it is always best to look at situations with a positive outlook.

Ultimately, if a patient requests assisted suicide, it is to alleviate the burden being placed upon family or to end constant suffering.
Around the world, some people take it upon to themselves to help their friends and families. The help they think they are doing is actually harm. If a person tries to help their family or friend end their life, it is murder. No matter the circumstances, a person killing another person is murder. If murder is deemed unlawful, physician-assisted suicide should be, too. There is no difference in a family member and a doctor wanting to end a person’s suffering. Both of these people are taking a life. There are some people in this world that would try to become a doctor, or pose as one, to be able to kill people. If physician-assisted suicide is illegal, more than likely this would not happen and somehow go unnoticed. It would be considered fine to do such a
thing.

Recent studies suggest that one has an alternate choice, not so definite and finite as an end to their life. One that will place control of life back into that person’s hands, rather than one requesting death as a last act of control. It is one of hope instead, a more reasonable and palatable choice. Without the option of assisted suicide, perhaps attention will be focused on remaining and considerably better choices. An alternative choice that gives a person renewed control over the mind and body. Unfortunately, these alternative options are overshadowed by the lure of a quick, painless, and unknown death. Succumbing to physician-assisted suicide is the equivalent to giving up on the battle. If one does give up and chooses to end their life, organ donation should be considered.

With an offer of assisted-suicide on the table, and a worried, insecure patient incapable of clear thought, even when charged as mentally capable, it is too easy to simply give up. Life is precious. It is a gift, a gift that should not be wasted. Life is simple, but it is not easy. It is priceless and often too short. It is ever changing, and remarkably misunderstood. Life is full of possibilities and wonder. No one should willing give their life away. Everyone should have hope. Life is what a person makes it. Life is everything that someone makes it. “The happiest person is not the person who has the best of everything, but the one who makes the best of everything.”

Suicide is permanent. There are no second chances, but the future is unpredictable. Anything is possible, even a cure, better treatment, and a chance for an improved life. Doctors have no authority to take any life. It violates their hippocratic oath. Assisted-suicide should remain illegal.