Dr. Kevorkian; Mercy Killings

DR. KEVORKIAN; MERCY KILLINGS

The roller coaster of life can be complicated at times, and we all experience a piece of time where it seems that nothing could get worse; your family is fighting with you constantly, someone stole your promotion at work, and to top it all off, your mother is suffering with a terminal illness and struggling to stay alive. The hospital bills keep adding up and every failed solution is costing thousands, and your mother is still suffering. The thought scrolls across your mind, “I wish I could end this.” Legalizing euthanasia or mercy killings could end that suffering that you, yourself, have been struggling to witness daily. Physician-assisted suicide should be a legal option for terminally ill patients.

Euthanasia has been around for centuries. The most notable incident of people practicing euthanasia would go back to when Hitler ordered children and adults alike suffering from mental retardation, physical deformities, or from incurable diseases be ordered dead, or as Hitler’s decree states “be accorded a mercy death.” (Written directly from Hitler’s diary dated 1 September 1939). Most recently the well-known case of Dr. Jack Kevorkian in the United States was actually sentenced to prison for 10 to 25 years for murder and the distribution of a controlled substance. He was a pathologist that assisted in taking 130 lives even though all 130 patients requested Dr. Kevorkian’s assistance. Bringing to his belief that doctors are able to protect and preserve life but also have the right to take life away with the request of the patient that is mentally capable of making such a decision.

Within the years of 1994 and 2004 there were 75 legislative bills in the United States, asking for physician-assisted suicide be legalized and all failed (B.A. Robinson). Currently Oregon, Columbia, Japan, and the Netherlands are the places that a person has the right to request euthanasia. Otherwise the only option for those with unbearable pain or an incurable disease would be to remain alive until your body collapses and/or death occurs.

The basic question that is posed by euthanasia or assisted suicide, according to

B.A. Robinson, is should a person who is terminally ill and who feels their life is not worth living because in intractable pain and/or loss of dignity, and/or capability and who repeatedly and actively asks for help in committing suicide and who is of sound mind and not suffering from depression be given assistance in dying? Euthanasia is a matter of choice for the patient that is suffering from a terminal illness.

People believe pain can be tolerated by proper management and with the right amount of money. Yet, realistically there are tens of millions of people that are without health care and therefore cannot receive the proper medication/management. The easiest solution that is available for pain is medication which some cannot afford and/or become addicting. So to some, there becomes the sensible solution if the diagnosis is grim for them that assisted suicide is the right path. Since one would want to protect there family from the hardships of preserving there life and the cost of doing so medically, that will in return benefit the family. The procedures to help extend ones life costs millions of dollars every year to help some live for just a day or maybe a week longer. When that money and funding from these procedures can go to benefit the nurturing of lives with the funding of prenatal care, infant care, and other research that could save and prolong someone’s