Patient Assisted Suicide: Whose Example Should Be Followed?

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become sick and
life becomes an endless episode phasing between unconsciousness and severe
pain. There are also cases in which an individual becomes diagnosed with a
disease with no definite cure and faces a road of painful treatment and
emotional heartache . One example of this was Diane's case. Diane was one
of Dr. Quills patients who was diagnosed with "acute myelomonocytic
leukemia", a disease with a 25% survival rate with treatment and certain
death in at most a few months without treatment (Quill 434). This disease
is very painful to say the least. She was faced with the decision between
a painful treatment process or death. Diane chose to let the disease run
its course, this way she would be able to say her final good-byes to her
family. Her only worry was that in the final stages of her death, would
she be able to control herself, or would she slip away in agony. To avoid
this she asked Dr. Quill if he would give her a prescription for
barbiturates so that when ...

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live with himself.
Dr. Kevorkian shares the belief that a patient should in certain
cases be allowed to chose assisted suicide if it means that they will avoid
unnecessary pain and suffering. He has had far more cases of patient
assisted suicide than Dr. Quill has, but their reasons are similar.
Recently one of Kevorkian's cases was featured on "DateLine", a news
program, in which a man named Thomas Youks was suffering from Lou Gehrig's
disease. He called upon Dr. Kevorkian because his disease was causing him
a lot of pain and he was afraid that he was going to choke himself. His
condition made it hard to eat, hard to sleep and hard to breath, for Tom
Youks every minute of ...

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