PHIL 434 Week 3 Term Paper Outline

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1 Week 4 Term Paper Outline Jessica Kim West Coast University PHIL 434: Medical Ethics and Issues Professor Todd Eller November 18, 2023

2 Week 2 Term Paper: Outline I. Introduction a. End of life care is for people who are in their last months or years of their life. It involves treatment, care, and support. With this particular case, we will be focusing on physician assisted suicide. II. Body Paragraph 1 – Technical aspects of your topic a. Topic Sentence: Physician assisted suicide is when a physician helps in a patient’s death by providing whatever is needed to allow the patient to participate in the life ending act. This controversial topic brings a lot of argument on how ethical this end-of-life option is. i. Supporting detail 1: This end-of-life option is legal in some states but has a set of strict regulations that need to be followed to even be considered. ii. Supporting detail 2: The Death with Dignity Act is also known as physician assisted suicide. This became legal in the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Montana, Colorado, New Mexico, Hawaii, Vermont, and Maine (Lawatsch, 2023). iii. Supporting detail 3: This practice was first legalized by Oregon through the Death with Dignity Act in 1997 (Hetzler, 2019). After that first state

3 had it passed, it started a ripple effect and other jurisdictions also legalized it. III. Body Paragraph 2 – Description of public policy debates surrounding your topic a. Transition: Physician assisted suicide is a controversial topic that raises many issues. b. Topic Sentence: Oregon was the first state to pass the Death with Dignity Act in 1997. 65% of American supported physician-assisted dying which led to the legalization. i. Supporting detail 1: People who choose to end their lives this way, are not considered to have died by suicide if they carefully follow the steps of the law (UCLA Health, 2023). Part taking in this act is voluntary for both the patient and physician. ii. Supporting detail 2: As the end-of-life act is legal in some states, there are certain requirements needed in order to go through with the process. To receive the aid-in-dying drug, a person must: be 18 years or older and a resident in the legalized state, have a terminal disease that results in death within 6 months, have the capacity to make medical decisions, and have the physical ability to take and ingest the drug (UCLA Health, 2023). iii. Supporting detail 3: To this day, the legalization of physician assisted suicide continues to evolve. Approximately one-sixth of the U.S.

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4 population resides in a jurisdiction where PAS is legally permitted (American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, 2019). IV. Body Paragraph 3 – Pro Arguments a. Transition: The ethical debate on this subject is if physician assisted death is morally wrong or right. b. Topic Sentence: Some believe that the end-of-life act is morally right. i. Supporting detail 1: The side of physician-assisted suicide being morally right comes from a few different reasons. Some ethical theories in support of this side are ethics of care, autonomy, and virtue ethics. The primary motivation for some individual’s belief that physician assisted suicide should be legal is to lessen the agony and suffering that patients endure as a result of their terminal condition. ii. Supporting detail 2: Autonomy is an ethical theory that allows patients to make their own decisions based on their morals and values. Patients accustomed to making their own health care decisions throughout life should also be permitted to control the circumstances of their deaths (Dugdale et al., 2019). It is morally correct to honor a patient’s choice of how to pass away when you respect their choices about what medical interventions to undergo.

5 iii. Supporting detail 3: When talking about physician assisted suicide, two important words are always thought about, pain and suffering. At its core, medicine has always aimed to relieve the suffering of patients from illness and disease (Dugdale et al., 2019). It is the jobs of healthcare workers to do whatever they can to help alleviate patients’ pain and suffering. V. Body Paragraph 4 – Con Arguments a. Transition: Now that we have gone over some of the pro arguments, we’ll move into the opposing side. b. Topic Sentence: Others believe that the end-of-life act is morally wrong. i. Supporting detail 1: The arguments that oppose this act believe physician- assisted suicide is morally wrong and are against it. Some ethical theories that support this argument are beneficence and nonmaleficence. The opposing side makes an effort to highlight how important hospice or palliative care services are in helping people cope with their agony rather than ending their life. ii. Supporting detail 2: Physicians have duties to patients on the basis of the ethical principles of beneficence (Snyder, 2018). That ethical principle entails that physicians are responsible for maximizing the benefits of patients to enhance their physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

6 iii. Supporting detail 3: Nonmaleficence is an ethical theory that state physicians are not to harm their patients. This principle supports several moral rules-do not kill, cause pain or suffering, incapacitate, cause offence, and deprive others of the goods of life (Varkey, 2021). Aiding patients in their death goes against this ethical principle. People against physician-assisted suicide encourage different treatments to steer away from death. They want to prolong their death as long as possible and to enhance their quality of life. VI. Opinion and Conclusion a. Transition: Both sides of this debate make great arguments regarding physician assisted suicide. b. Statement of Opinion: After doing research and hearing each side on this topic, I realize that I am in agreement of the end-of-life act. I believe that every human being in this world should have the ability to make their own decisions, especially if it is regarding their own body or their own life. No one should be able to decide unless they are mentally incapable to do so. One of the articles that I read during my research on this topic really opened up my eyes. The ethical principle of autonomy connects strongly with how I feel on this topic. Autonomy is allowing patients to make their own decisions about their own medical care. Why and how is it any different when it comes to regarding their own death? No one can truly understand or know what it is like to be in agonizing pain and suffering 24/7 of every day. The want to end their life means that they have accepted death and are

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7 ready to end their pain. That decision should be respected just as much as other decisions on medical care. References American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. (2019, June 24). Statement on physician-assisted dying . AAHPM. https://aahpm.org/positions/pad California end of life option act (EOLOA) . UCLA Health. (2023, November 16). https://www.uclahealth.org/patient-resources/support-information/advance-directive/ california-end-life-option-act-eoloa

8 Dugdale, L. S., Lerner, B. H., & Callahan, D. (2019, December 20). Pros and cons of physician aid in dying . The Yale journal of biology and medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6913818/ Hetzler, P. T., Nie, J., Zhou, A., & Dugdale, L. S. (2019, December 20). A report of physicians’ beliefs about physician-assisted suicide: A national study . The Yale journal of biology and medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6913834/ Lawatsch, E. (2023, September 27). Medical aid in dying end-of-life option offers dignity . Death With Dignity. https://deathwithdignity.org/news/2023/03/3-29-23-senior-guide/ Snyder Sulmasy L;Mueller PS; (2018, October 17). Ethics and the legalization of physician- assisted suicide: An american college of physicians position paper . Annals of internal medicine. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28975242/ Varkey, B. (2021). Principles of clinical ethics and their application to practice . Medical principles and practice : international journal of the Kuwait University, Health Science Centre. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7923912/#:~:text=Nonmaleficence%20is %20the%20obligation%20of,of%20the%20goods%20of%20life.

PHIL 434 Week 3 Term Paper Outline

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