...Physicians-Assisted Suicide Physician-Assisted Suicide is a medical process where a physician supplies a terminally ill patient with a prescription for one dose of lethal medication. The prescription is given to a patient upon request only if the patient intends to end his or her own life because of suffrage from a terminal illness. Today, physicians-assisted suicide is more commonly known as the Death-With-Dignity Act. Recent stories of patients who have attempted to end their own life by lethal medication have made countless headlines concerning the topic throughout many informational sources. Currently, the states of Washington, Oregon, and Vermont are the only three states that have adopted the Death-With-Dignity Act. Physician-Assisted Suicide is among many practices that aid in ending a patient’s life along with DNR’s, DNI’s, and AND’s, when life-sustaining treatments are denied. Physicians-Assisted Suicide is much more controversial than other life ending methods because it enables a patient to end her or her own life in a way that many individuals feel is immoral and unethical. The ethical issues of physicians-assisted suicide are both emotional and controversial, yet healthcare workers deal with a request for this alternative every day. Is physicians-assisted suicide the answer? The question doesn’t come by an easy answer. However, both sides of the debate, either for it or against it, provide strong, concrete points that help truly uncover where the controversy lies...
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...Brittany Maynard Brittany Maynard was a very healthy 29 year old woman whom in January 2014 was diagnosed with a grade 2 astrocytoma (a form of brain cancer). Brittany underwent both invasive and non-invasive treatment for her condition with success. However, in April of 2014, her cancer reappeared; this time worse and staged at a grade 4, which is known as a glioblastoma. She was advised she only had six months to live. Brittany wanted to continue living her life, but ultimately did not want to become a burden to her family. At the time, Brittany lived in the State of California, which did not allow for assisted deaths. Because of this, Brittany moved to Oregon, one of five states that does allow for assisted deaths. Brittany ended her life on November 1, 2014, but the impact she left on this nation prior to her death was very impressive. The re-ignition of the Right to Die...
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...COMS 321 – Rhetorical Discourse 18 Jun 2015 DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS: LET’S CALL PHYSICIAN-ASSISTED SUICIDE WHAT IT IS I have conducted a descriptive analysis from an article written by Karin Klein, Editorial Writer of the Los Angeles Times, published on February 17, 2015. Klein tackled the topic “Let’s call physician-assisted suicide what it is”. The newly written Senate Bill (SB) 128 would “allow physicians in California to write lethal prescriptions under tightly controlled circumstances” for the terminally ill but will not call it as “suicide” nor will it be reflected as such on death certificates. Klein’s editorial is focused on the these two major flaws of the bill written for the terminally ill who are looking for a dignified way to end their life by allowing them access to lethal prescription drugs if the bill is passed. The bill is mirrored after the State of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act law passed by its legislature in 1997. Klein’s purpose, at the time of her writing the editorial, was to reach out to the legislators and advocates of the bill, her audience, to modify the bill by naming it as it is, “a physician-assisted suicide” and reflecting it as such in death certificates. The tone and approach to her writing was straight to the point while at times satirical, stretching how the definition of “suicide” can have a different connotation in the eyes and perspectives of the advocates of the bill. Klein seeks to appeal to the writers and proponents of the...
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