On Feb. 28, columnist Connie Schultz proposed a very provocative question to the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Should a person with no hope of recovery from a worsening disease be allowed to choose when he or she will die? No person should have to endure terminal suffering that makes death unbearable or prolonged. When terminally ill patients feel that the benefits of life are outweighed and overshadowed by uncontrollable pain, loss of dignity or loss of the quality of life, they should be able to ask for and receive help in assisted suicide.
The American Geriatrics Society define physician-assisted suicide as When a physician provides either equipment or medication
or informs the patient of the most efficacious use of already available means for the purpose of assisting the patient to end his or her own life. With physician-assisted suicide the patient makes the decision and performs the act, as opposed to when the physician performs the intervention in euthanasia.
Dr. Peter Rogatz believes Many arguments are put forward for maintaining the prohibition against physician-assisted suicide but I believe they are outweighed by two fundamental principles that support ending the prohibition: patient autonomy - the right to control one's own body - and the physician's duty to relieve suffering
(Rogatz 2005).
It is unjust to tell terminally ill patients like Debbie Prudy to continue living a prolonged life of suffering against their will. It is heartbreaking to see families torn apart by such a difficult decision, and then forced by laws to be apart in the most vulnerable of times. Marcia Angell, former executive editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, claims the greatest harm we can do is to consign a desperate patient to unbearable suffering - or force the patient to seek out a stranger like Dr. Kevorkian.'
We must show care and compassion to the terminally ill whose lives are already filled with enough pain. Allow these patients the right to live as they wish, and to die as they wish - with peace and dignity.
Nick Hajdin is a junior studying communication.
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Opinion
