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Should doctor-assisted suicides be allowed ?

Jack Kevorkian, the Michigan physician otherwise known as “Dr. Death,” has devoted his life to helping people stop endless pain. This “angel of mercy” medically assists terminally ill individuals seeking a painless way to end their lives.

Because of the ethical and legal implications of his work – playing God, the question of murder and the finality of the decisions – many opponents of this option to ‘natural’ death are seeking legal means to stop the doctor and his work. But in order to define natural death, we must understand that not only does a heart attack at age 92 or breast cancer at age 35 qualify, but so does a 7-year old’s untreated, deadly wound from a rabid squirrel. These deaths are all natural, apparently “God-OK’d” deaths.

However, these same opponents seem to feel that a rapidly degenerating, agonizing life, which is no longer desired by the person, needs to be saved until a natural death occurs. But saved for what? More pain, agony and a deeper desire to be dead.

Contrary to the opinions of these would-be “life savers,” Dr. Kevorkian doesn’t just sidle up to his victims, decide they’d be better off dead, then pump cyanide down their throats. In actuality, the “suicide machine” used in assisted deaths is a carbon monoxide breathing apparatus activated by the patient. Slowly, a gas is released into the individual’s body, and in moments the pain is over forever.

In addition to extensive research of the patient’s terminal condition and soundness of mind, intense counseling of both patient and family is undergone before he even considers assisting in the suicide.

The primary arguments against such action seem to be based on the inability of mere man to decide when it is time for another man to die, as well as the decision to die made by the person him or herself. These pivotal issues – both legally and morally – are the basis behind Kevorkian’s upcoming trial in Michigan, which stands to set the precedent for future laws on doctor assisted suicide and perhaps ultimately on suicide itself.

From a legal standpoint, suicide is wrong. But not only is it totally ridiculous to imagine anyone balking from suicide because it’s illegal, but there is a prevailing thought that if doctor-assisted suicide becomes legal, people will be killing themselves all over the place.

The moral argument may appear sound as well, but it is equally flimsy. Should people make life or death decisions for themselves? Although committing and assisting in suicides is indeed interfering with “nature” or God’s plan, so is the death sentence, dying in a war or getting killed driving home on New Year’s Eve.

Allowing these sick, truly helpless, miserable human beings to finally end their own pain by their own decision, by their own hand, should be legal.
And assisted suicide is just as moral as drowning in your own lung fluid.