How to Die in Oregon explores
the legalization of assisted suicide – dying with dignity. The right to die movement in America has been
an issue in the United States for many years, Oregon being the first state to
allowed physician assisted death. Before this, only the Netherlands and
Switzerland allowed assisted suicide.
Here is the Hemlock Society of San Diego's website: http://www.hemlocksocietysandiego.org/ The idea of assisted suicide has spread since the making of this film.
In watching this documentary I didn’t really understand the opposing view to dying with dignity. Too prolong someone’s pain is torture. Like Cody said when talking about growing up on farm “we didn’t let our animals suffer.” All accounts shown in the film were very well informed on what they were getting in to and no pressure was paired with the purchasing of the medication. At anytime the client could choose to back out of their decision. In Cody’s case, she set a date but found that she felt much better when the time came. Many of the interviews claimed that just having the medication in their home gave them a greater since of control over their lives. In a time when your life is slipping away and your days solely consist of medication and doctors one would think we would all agree that people deserve a sense of control in their lives.
Here is a video of a women giving her personal story about dying with dignity
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ReplyDeleteI really agree with the statement you said when it is torture to prolong someones' pain. Life or death, especially in these sorts of situations should be in the choice of the person who is suffering greatly. If I was put in that situation, I would probably obtain the medication, just to keep in my house. It would give me a greater sense of control. Lastly, I tend to think about the guilt that the doctors must live with. No, it's not their fault that their patients want to die, but if I was a doctor and I prescribed a sedative like propanol, I would feel guilty for taking their life, no matter the circumstance.
ReplyDeleteDeath is a sensitive subject. What I've always wondered is: if you're living on medication and oxygen tanks, are you really living? I was talking about this with a friend of mine one time and he had an opposing view from mine. "You can be on an oxygen tank and still be happy," he said. Due to medicine and surgeries the average human life has been extended about 20-50 years. Yes there are 105 year olds still alive, but I don't see them in the park. They can't leave their beds in nursing homes. Are they really living?
ReplyDeleteI really like that you pointed out that prolonging someone's pain could be considered a form of torture. The ethical issue in question about Dying with Dignity can be opposed just as easily by bringing up a total new ethical issue of torture. That's something that people should consider when they express their opposition to physician-assisted suicide.
ReplyDeleteI agree with your point of view as well. However, I also agree with Wesley. if I were a doctor and prescribed something like that and the patient took their life only to find out a few weeks later that a new medication or procedure had been developed that could have saved them, I'm not sure if I could continue in my profession or even be able to live with myself after that.
ReplyDeleteAssisted suicide is definitely a messy topic. On the one hand, it definitely seems more merciful to let someone who is suffering because of a terminal disease to end their life painlessly, but how do we draw the line as to who qualifies and who doesn't? There's never going to be a perfect answer, but the instances we saw in the documentary seemed to work well.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point about how it appears as torture to prolong someone's pain. But I disagree that it's like putting down an animal. We're human beings. Although everyone should have the right to die, we should also have the right to live. If every person in every state had access to this type of medication, then the world would be filled with a lot less people. There are so many clinically depressed people, due to one low point in their life such as losing their job, that think that they should die, and would try to if they could. I understand that assisting suicide in the cases in "How to Die in Oregon" are different because each patient is chronically ill, but I still believe that every person should be kept alive as long as possible. I don't think that we should decide whether to die or not.
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