Oregon's Right to Die Controversy

Death Regardless of Dignity

The accepted social policies of our present day are based on the themes, values and goals that citizens support for humane changes in policy toward a renaissance of government activism. In the past few years the topic of physician-assisted suicide and the right to die statutes have emerged as a growing concern among medical professionals, citizens, and government officials alike.

One such statute, the Oregon Death with Dignity Act, which allows physicians to write prescriptions for a lethal dosage of medication to people with illness, is an example of a new policy.

The act was a citizen’s initiative passed in which patients must meet certain criteria to participate, including two oral requests separated by at least 15 days, a written request to the attending physician, signed by two witnesses, and the patient must not appear to be suffering from any psychological disorder.

The objective of Oregon’s Death with Dignity statute is to settle the genuine dispute as to what the desires of an incapacitated person really are.

However, the government’s viewpoint that an incapacitated person must not want to live because of their current situation is the result of situations where court appointed and statutory guardians have had potential conflicts of interest, and another party with authority is needed to assist in settling the dispute. There are some cases where there does appear to be a legitimate basis for the government to intervene. The values and the ideological orientation of the statute appear to be based on non-discrimination, civil rights and self-determination.

Get quality help now

writer-Charlotte

Verified

Proficient in: Right To Die

4.7 (348)

“ Amazing as always, gave her a week to finish a big assignment and came through way ahead of time. ”

+84 relevant experts are online

Hire writer

Studies of patient attitudes toward assisted suicide and euthanasia indicate that a patient’s interest in physician-assisted suicide appear to be a function of psychological stress and social factors.

The underlying theory of the statute is that incapacitated or terminally ill individuals should be given an opportunity to die with dignity, before they become a burden on family and friends that take care of them. This theory is based largely in part on the fact that society has not done much to educate the healthy population about the manner in which incapacitated or terminally ill people live normal and dignified lives. This is based on the theory, posed by citizens, that certain individuals afflicted with terminal illnesses should have the legal right to hasten their death. As a result, individuals that acquire these disabilities often view death as an extremely viable solution. The target population that the Oregon Death with Dignity statute involves are those that are terminally ill. There are both long and short term effects of the statute on the rest of the population, as well as the target population.

Oregon has the fourth highest rate of elder suicide in the United States, and the statute appears to be a short- term solution to a long-term problem. The statute gives physicians the long-term power to judge whether a particular suicide is rational, based on the physician’s evaluation of the individual’s quality of life. The short term effect of the statute is that federal resources previously used to care for the elderly and terminally ill will be freed up to be allocated toward other uses. The long term effect of the statute is that no physician will be charged with manslaughter for facilitating an assisted suicide, or prosecuted under drug laws. More importantly, doctors will once again be in control of making all of the health care decisions.

Those that probably do not really want to die will assess their current situation, and assume that the government is most likely right in it’s’ reach. This policy is in direct conflict with the hippocratic oath in the first place and it was put into existence to protect the ethics of the medical world. The oath explicitly states “that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug”. Meaning that a doctor should treat a patient with compassionate emotions before doing anything irrationally with surgery or medications. Then it also states that one most especially must tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God” (Tyson, 2001). Meaning that it is the doctor’s job to do anything within their power to help these individuals even if the only option is to help them emotionally.

Deciding who lives or dies is not within their job description. In an analysis of current alternatives to the Oregon Death with Dignity statute, one can determine that the name of the act itself is problematic, for it suggests that these individuals cannot die with dignity on their own. People die everyday due to terminal illnesses and one can’t say that these individuals didn’t die with dignity. Then there is the issue of doctors taking advantage of this policy by allowing their patients to die in order to get another to fill the patients space. The health care system has turned into somewhat of a machine. For some doctors have a certain amount of patients that they have to treat daily and they are paid accordingly. Doctors can also be paid according to the severity of the cases that they work. Therefore if the death of one patient leads the doctor to be able to get paid more, then what is stopping the doctor from claiming it was in the patient’s interest? Although I do realize that a doctor is required to recite the Hippocratic oath to uphold specific ethical standards, it wouldn’t be the first time that a doctor has broken the oath.

For that is one of the purposes of having this policy because doctors had assisted with suicides of this nature and felt bad or were persecuted afterward. The reason that these events were deemed wrong in the first place is because if the patient is told that they have a terminal illness then they could be under extreme duress and may not be thinking in their right mind at the time of their decision. That is why patients have picked another person to convey their medical choices to the doctoral staff. To make this policy ethical there must be a minimum level of quality of life, a longer time period to decide, a mental health check, a meeting with a counselor to check the patient’s emotional state, a social worker to oversee the ethics of each decision and the patient has to be the one to kill themselves. This option should only be granted to the people who are suffering severely and have the lowest quality of life possible while they are still able to rationally think.

The longer period of time will give the patient the time to truly process their diagnoses and circumstances, so that they can make an informed decision. Obviously the mental health assessment is there to make sure that the patient is mentally stable and aware enough to make a decision as grand as if they live or die. The counselor meeting is there to make sure that the patient isn’t being rash and has truly processed their circumstances and the social worker is there to make sure that there is no hidden agenda lurking behind the actions of the doctors. Then lastly the patient must be the one to take their own life, so that the doctors themselves don’t physically break the hippocratic oath.