The Right to Die with Dignity and Assisted Suicide

The Right to Die with Dignity and Assisted Suicide are commonly intertwined. Assisted suicide or Euthanasia comes from the Greek meaning "happy or good death" (Temper, 2008, p. 1). Assisted Suicide has separate forms; the killing of a pet, Hitler's pooling of the "Non-Perfect Race," the killing of a patient at the request of the family, mercy killing, physician assisted suicide, and the killing of the terminally ill (Green, 2008, p. 1). Although dignity invoked in discussions of the status of medical ethics is supposedly threatened by physical deterioration and dependency, we cannot accept the status of those claims to base our moral opinions on (Velleman, 2006, p. 1). Assisted Suicide is not a fixed condition with which he or she must cope (Velleman, 2006, p. 3). Although doubts are raised about where Euthanasia or Assisted Suicide will take us in the future, we must wonder what the positive and negative aspects it could be.

The Positives of Assisted Suicide

Assisted Suicide is effectively happening under the table, both to people who have condoned it and to those who have not. It is not that, that particular situation should be the justification for approving such legislation, but that we could better educate and help those who truly wish to terminate their own lives. The growing populations that are terminally ill, unfortunately have no energy to make their voices heard politically, and therefore are at the mercy of energetic fundamentalist (Green, 2008, p. 1). The only state in America to have approved Euthanasia is Oregon, and they claim that "collectively there is no reported abuse of the system they have put into place (N/A, 1998, p. 1). "A generation ago a number of people in France formed an Association for the Right to Die with Dignity (ADMD) and now have 40,000 members" (Placeholder4). The growing issue is that technology has given us a choice, once upon a time it was not so (Velleman, 2006, p. 2). For some individuals Euthanasia or Assisted Suicide is an excellent idea that gives them the option to not die painfully while for others it is only a nicer way of saying murder.

The Negatives of Assisted Suicide

The problem with this perception of Assisted Suicide is that if others regard you as choosing your state of affairs, they will hold you responsible for it (Velleman, 2006, p. 2). "In 1990, the Dutch killed several thousand persons, most of them elderly, without their consent, or the knowledge of their families, or else as the result of a single request by the patient (Remmelink, 2003, p. 1). The facts regarding the Dutch mass suicide also reports that, "96.6% of all deaths were actively caused by physicians in 1990" (Temper, 2008, p. 1). To make things even worse, "61% of those receiving lethal overdoses of painkillers, 27% of them were competent, and the board of the Royal Dutch Medical Association endorsed Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia of newborns and infants with extreme disabilities (Remmelink, 2003, p. 1). Modern medicine has turned death into a protracted ordeal, and Harris Interactive in April found, "70% of Americans believe 'the law should allow doctors to comply with the wishes of a dying patient in severe distresses" (Unknown, 2008, p. 1). This particular group of individuals believes their lives are going to end and the negativity of such an idea can only make Assisted Suicide so.

My personal decision based on Assisted Suicide is a break with eternity. The terminally ill are overwhelmingly in favor of this choice. While it is