Background
In this case you have a 40-year-old women named Sue Rodriguez how was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 1991 and in 1993 she was given estimation that she had roughly two-fourteen months to live. As her prognosis was that she would soon lose the ability to swallow, speak, walk and move with out assistance. In addition she would eventually lose her ability to breathe on her own with out the help of a respirator. As her illness progressed Sues abilities began to deteriorate, and she began wishing to maintain control over how and why she would die. Ultimately, Sue petitions to allow a medical practitioner set up technological means which she might, by her own hand, at the time of her choosing, end her life.
Dilemma
This case raises multiple concerns. One would be addressing the if assisted suicide should be legal or not. That it is not legal discriminates against those who are dying but physically unable to commit suicide without assistance. As Sue’s illness has began compromising her quality of life her desire to end her life and maintain control over her body a doctor’s obligation to nonmaleficence. The bigger picture is the issue of whether a patient’s autonomy is more important than or maleficence.
Analysis
I find it for religious reasons not acceptable for the doctor to support Sue’s wishes to end her own life. From a moral stand point I don’t believe it is the doctors responsibility to make the decision to aiding to helping an individual end their life. While the case discusses that assisted suicide is unwarranted because of accessibility to proper pain administration this presents a conflict with as if the doctor administers drugs that will result in death instead of pain med, the doctor is essentially causing more harm than healing. As discussed in Beauchamp and Childress, “Killing is unjustified when it deprives the person who dies of opportunities and goods. However, if a person freely authorizes death, making an autonomous judgment that cessation of pain and suffering through death constitutes a personal benefit rather than a setback to interests, then active aid-in-dying at the person’s request involves neither harming nor wronging” (Beauchamp and Childress 182). Which seems to justify Sue’s request, as Sue is competent and is making the autonomous decision to die. In conclusion, I do agree that that assisted suicide breaches human life standards and is not something that is to be compromised just because a human being request to terminate one’s own life.
Works Cited
Beauchamp, Tom L., James F. Childress. Principles of Biomedical Ethics. 7th ed. N.p.: Oxford University Press, 2012. Print.
Thomas, John E., and Wilfrid J. Waluchow. Well and Good: A Case Study Approach to Health Care Ethics. 4th ed. Toronto: Broadview, 2014. Print.
Maleficence is defined by doing and action that causes harm. To you it seems that ending ones life is the ultimate harm and thus the physician should never chose death as a choice. I would disagree on this point in two was. First the ultimate harm is not always death. This can be seen with terminally ill cancer patients who are in excruciating amounts of pain. Yes you can save the body and prolong their life by a year maybe, but is it worth it for them to suffer through all that pain? They are not only being forced to wait for their death to come but also experience physical pain. Yes there is better pain management, but there is a limit to that. To me that would be far more cruel to subject a person to such pain against their will. If the patient is willing to keep living and try to live with the pain then I see no harm in administering treatment. But in this case Sue’s disease is terminal and degenerative. She herself has shown interest in deciding when to die because the pain she will go through is not worth it to simply prolong her life for a few months. The second issue is that how can a physician decide what harm will come to a patient. They themselves cannot make that choice because they are making a quality of life argument which as pointed out in PBE is very dangerous. If the physician is to always decide which harm is more harmful than another when the patient is in disagreement, then that opens up so many avenues of abuse. The physician is not the one undergoing the disease and unless they have experienced the disease first hand, which for terminal diseases is close to impossible, then they cannot fully comprehend what the patient is going through. In this way non-maleficence become far harder to define because we must ask who get’s to decide the quantity of harm or even define what harm is. Thus I would say to allow Sue to get her wish fulfilled.