Should Medical Aid in Dying be Legal? - Essay Sample

Medical aid in dying has been an ongoing debate for a while now. People have different views concerning the process, with them having contrasting arguments and views (Pope, 2018). Some people ask whether medical help in dying is a human right, while others say that it helps in relieving people’s excessive pain and struggle while there is proof they have only a little time to live (Pope, 2018). Depending on the background of individuals and their beliefs, the differences in the viewpoint and acceptance of the process are seen. Some say it is assisted suicide or euthanasia, while others think otherwise.

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Medical aid in dying is a medical exercise that has been time tested and trusted; it authorizes for mentally stable adult individuals’ that have six months or less prognosis to be alive to ask a doctor to give them a medical prescription that they can self-inject themselves and die in a peaceful way earlier than the prognoses time (Pope, 2018). Because of the way the process happens, it has led to developments of other names that have been referred to as medically incorrect like; euthanasia, death with formality, physician help in dying, and assisted physician suicide. According to medical law, medical aid in dying is none of those terms, and they have stated them to be incorrect factually and also misleading (Pope, 2018).

The medical aid in dying is still illegal in most states in the United States and also in most nations worldwide (Katz & Johnson, 2016). According to Terry Law, who is one of the most used doctors in the USA on the medical aid in the dying process stated that there is too much data based on helping people to live longer but very limited information explaining the process of killing people (Katz & Johnson, 2016). This was during a Seattle meeting in 2016, where several doctors had met to discuss a possible drug to facilitate medical aid in dying after it had become very expensive or unavailable all over a sudden (Katz & Johnson, 2016). In January 2019, in seven states that included Hawaii, the law was passed where medical aid in dying was granted. Oregon was one of the first states to allow the process with it being granted in 1997 (D’Souza & Astrow, 2020). The process gained a lot of attention after one cancer patient relocated to the state in 2014 to make use of the law (D’Souza & Astrow, 2020).

The process has left the citizens as well as the medical practitioners differing about the laws in both states that have allowed it and those that have not. The process has no aiding or facilitators as there is no government or association that has come forward to fund for its research. The government, in the approved states, only issue guidance on the qualifying patients for the process but not which drugs to be administered. In December 2019, Astrow, who is a professor of clinical medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and chief of hematology/medical oncology at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in the Bioethics Forum essay, stated that medical aid in dying is not a human right (D’Souza & Astrow, 2020). The professor states that with the legalization of medical aid in dying, it becomes an option granted towards providing treatment (D’Souza & Astrow, 2020). He continues to argue that the legalization gives all the health practitioners caring for the dying patients a chance to have a discussion with the patients who would know that the offer is the table even if it is not directly presented to them, which might lead to more pressure to some of the patients that are battling long term or serious illnesses (D’Souza & Astrow, 2020).

In the United States of America, patients who are terminally ill have four options that are medically approved to control when and how they will die (Buchbinder, Brassfield, & Mishra, 2019). The patient might stop undertaking the treatment that is sustaining them, palliative sedation that leads to consciousness might be administered to those with uncontrollable suffering, the patients can stop drinking and drinking completely, or the medical aid in dying can be applied (Buchbinder, Brassfield, & Mishra, 2019). All the four options can only apply to adults that are in a stable mental health state as stated earlier, who make the decisions themselves, though medics state that the medical aid in the dying process is safer, faster, and less painful than the others as the patient dies peacefully while asleep (Buchbinder, Brassfield, & Mishra, 2019).

There have been debates within people whether the medical aid in dying is safe; Oregon State has been performing the process for over twenty years, which provides evidence on the safety (Buchbinder, Brassfield, & Mishra, 2019). There is another twenty years’ combination of evidence that comes from other areas of jurisdiction that have been approved where all the laws about the process have been seen to protect the patients and even improving care during that period of final life moments (Buchbinder, Brassfield, & Mishra, 2019). Religion continues to differ with the medical laws pertaining to life and death. In most religious cultures, life and death are sacred, and any kind of tampering with its natural causes is prohibited (Guiahi & Epstein, 2020). According to the medical aid in dying law, the process is to help in reducing pain and struggle while in religion; it is the right of every human being to live in the way nature presents itself until the occurrence of natural death (Guiahi & Epstein, 2020).

According to the medical aid in dying laws, all the patients who are terminally ill get protection from abuse and coercion (Hannig, 2019). Diane Rehm, who is the NRP host on the Diane Rehm show, stated that it is a right for every individual to choose how they should die (Diane Rehm). She says that her opinion comes from the suffering that she witnessed her husband go through during the last days of his life. She further states that if the illness that an individual is going through has no hope towards any kind of meaningful recovery, the person should be granted the right to choose to end their life.

Compassion and autonomy are granted by the medical aid in dying to terminally ill patients during their most hard times (Hannig, 2019). The medical aid in dying laws only administers the process to only those that are eligible or meet the qualifications. They must be over 18 years old, should be only terminally ill patients that have only less than six months to live, they should mentally stable with the ability to make their own decisions concerning the healthcare process, and should be able self-ingest themselves with the prescription (Hannig, 2019). There are certain safeguard cores that should be established by the physicians; they should inform the ill patients requesting the process about all other ends of life options like palliative care, pain control, hospice, and comfort care (Hannig, 2019). The patients must be informed that they have the right to change their minds; they can refuse to self-ingest even after receiving the prescriptions. The rescinding opportunity should be granted to the patients (Hannig, 2019).

In the past two years, seven states have legalized medical aid in dying in the USA (D’Souza & Astrow, 2020). The process has been evidently proven to be safe in the proven states, and it is only voluntary. There are qualifications and laws guiding the process for it to be safe and human. People have different beliefs concerning life and death, with most believing that it should be natural. Personally, I advocate for the process to be legalized in all USA states. Medical aid in dying should be granted to any terminally ill patient who has been confirmed to have less than six months to live. There is no point for a person to undergo so much pain for that long with proof that they are not going to recover. I personally think that ill patients should be granted the opportunity to decide whether they can undergo prolonged suffering until death occurs naturally, or they can be helped to die peacefully in their sleep.

References

Buchbinder, M., Brassfield, E. R., & Mishra, M. (2019). Health care providers’ experiences with implementing medical aid-in-dying in Vermont: a qualitative study. Journal of general internal medicine, 34(4), 636-641. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11606-018-4811-1

D’Souza, K., & Astrow, A. B. (2020). Patient Spirituality as a Component of Supportive Care: Assessment and Intervention. Current Treatment Options in Oncology, 21(2), 11. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11864-020-0701-y

Guiahi, M., & Epstein, A. S. (2020). Conflicts between Religious Institutional Directives and State Laws for Medical Aid in Dying. Journal of Palliative Medicine, 23(4), 448-448. https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/pdfplus/10.1089/jpm.2019.0581

Hannig, A. (2019). Author (IZ) ing Death: Medical Aid-in-Dying and the Morality of Suicide. Cultural Anthropology, 34(1), 53-77. https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/3669

Katz, R. S., & Johnson, T. A. (Eds.). (2016). When professionals weep: Emotional and countertransference responses in palliative and end-of-life care. Routledge. https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=NYNwCwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=Terry+Law,+medical+aid+in+dying,+2016+seattle&ots=wsGKEnQPpM&sig=yjNecoDGqFnZVdNIBsJMXkylylY

Pope, T. M. (2018). Legal history of medical aid in dying: physician assisted death in US courts and legislatures. NML Rev., 48, 267. https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/nmlr48&section=18