Euthanasia

Euthanasia is a very sensitive topic. We can find out in literature different opinion based on the
peoples own judgments. Everyone has a point of view supported by his/her beliefs, religion,
culture, political angle and the direct participation in those in charge of making decisions.
I consider that a patient has the right to choose when to die, but for making that decision the
person must be mentally sound. I totally agree with the idea of assisting death in no way
precludes giving the best palliative care possible but rather integrates compassionate care and
respect for the patient's autonomy and ultimately makes death with dignity a real option.
I remember Brittany Maynards case, a young lady diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor
with a prognosis of six month of life. Maynard, after a couple of surgeries and not getting better,
made some researches and arrived to a heartbreaking conclusion: that there is no treatment that
would save her life and the recommended treatments would have destroyed the time she had left.
So she decided that death with dignity was the best option for her and her family. This case is an
example of Physician-assisted suicide.
Dear colleagues I would like to share some real historical facts related with Euthanasia
retrieved from http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php?
resourceID=000128

1. An autopsy of Terri Schiavo performed on Apr. 1, 2005 revealed that her brain weighed 615
grams -- less than half of the expected weight for an adult her age.
2. In classical Athens, city magistrates kept a supply of poison for anyone who wished to die.
3. Visits to the Internet site for the US Living Will Registry increased from 500 a day to 50,000 a day
when the Schiavo case was in the headlines.
4. Jack Kevorkian, MD, the pathologist sentenced on Apr. 13, 1999 to 10-25 years in prison for his
role in the euthanasia of Thomas Youk was paroled on June 1, 2007 after serving 8 years.
5. All 50 states and the District of Columbia prohibit euthanasia under general homicide laws.
6. Physician-assisted suicide is legal in four US states: Oregon, Washington, Montana, and
Vermont.
7. On Jan. 17, 2006, in Gonzales v. Oregon, the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to uphold the ability
of physicians to prescribe lethal doses of controlled substances to terminally ill patients.
8. Between Oct. 27, 1997 (when the Oregon Death with Dignity Act was passed) and 2007, 341
people in the state of Oregon have died from lethal drugs prescribed under the terms of the
Oregon Death with Dignity Act.

9. On Nov. 5, 2008, Washington became the second US state to legalize physician-assisted suicide
after voters approved a ballot initiative (59% to 41%) to implement the Washington Death with
Dignity Act.
10. Euthanasia is legal in three countries worldwide: Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
11. On Dec. 5, 2008, Montana district judge Dorothy McCarter made Montana the third state with
legal physician-assisted suicide with her ruling in the case of Baxter v. Montana.
12. The original text of the ancient Greek Hippocratic Oath, written sometime between 460 and 380
BC, contained prohibitions against surgery, abortion, and euthanasia. It is still taken (in some
form) by many medical school graduates.
13. The earliest American statute to explicitly outlaw assisted suicide was enacted in New York on
Dec. 10, 1828.
14. A 2003 study appearing in the New England Journal of Medicine found that 11 percent of
physicians surveyed (1,902 total) would, under certain circumstances, be willing to hasten a
patient's death by prescribing medication, and that 7 percent would administer a lethal injection,
despite both acts being illegal at the time of the survey.
15. A May 2006 Gallup Poll found that 69% of Americans answered yes to the question "When a
person has a disease that cannot be cured, do you think doctors should be allowed by law to end
the patient's life by some painless means if the patient and his family request it?"

Several countries have adopted laws that regulate physician assistance in dying. Such assistance
may consist of providing a patient with a prescription of lethal medication that is selfadministered by the patient, which is usually referred to as (physician) assistance in suicide, or of
administering lethal medication to a patient, which is referred to as euthanasia. The main aim of
regulating physician assistance in dying is to bring these practices into the open and to provide
physicians with legal certainty. A key condition in all jurisdictions that have regulated either
assistance in suicide or euthanasia is that physicians are only allowed to engage in these acts
upon the explicit and voluntary request of the patient. All systems that allow physician assistance
in dying have also in some way included the notion that physician assistance in dying is only
accepted when it is the only means to address severe suffering from an incurable medical
condition. Arguments against the legal regulation of physician assistance in dying include
principled arguments, such as the wrongness of hastening death, and arguments that emphasize
the negative consequences of allowing physician assistance in dying, such as a devaluation of the
lives of older people, or people with chronic disease or disabilities. Opinion polls show that some
form of accepting and regulating euthanasia and physician assistance in suicide is increasingly
supported by the general population in most western countries. Studies in countries where
physician assistance in dying is regulated suggest that practices have remained rather stable in
most jurisdictions and that physicians adhere to the legal criteria in the vast majority of cases.
Assisted suicide and euthanasia. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24182377