Assisted suicide is the ultimate "taboo", that will probably never be met with a logical conclusion within society. There will always be groups that stand on platforms either for or against the assistance of a physicians in suicide. It is a practice that skates the thin ice of life and death. The question for doctors are, do I assist a patient with their death to ease them of their pain, or do they follow the Hippocratic Oath and try to preserve their life at all costs.

The Hippocratic Oath proclaims that a doctors prerogatives are to administer treatments at all costs, to try and save a patients life. Now with the introduction of technology in the medical field there are now more ways to prolong ones life. Now the saying "Keeping a patient alive at all cost" rings even louder, as technology could at one point or another perform any operation that a human body performs. If a patient needs help breathing, eating, or help being resuscitated, there are machines that can perform each and every operation the human body normal does. As these technologies keep patients alive are they really benefiting from them as their quality of life tremendously decreases. The quality of life now comes to the forefront of these situations, because what type of quality is it when a person lies in bed not responding to any stimuli’s or interaction with the environment around them. Is sustaining life so important to the medical community and to the families that they would give up this persons quality of life to fulfill their own agendas. These families are met with many decisions; either dying sooner or live longer with aggressive therapy. Prolonging the dying process may increase the discomfort for not only the patient but for the family as well. There would also become an increase in dependence on people and the technology that is prolonging that persons life, but their is a huge decrease in the quality of life.

There are three kinds of the so called "mercy death"; first is assisted suicide, which is when the doctor provides the patient with the means to kill himself such as lethal injection, gun, and or the suicide machine. The second method is active suicide, which is when the doctor intervenes actively in the death of the patient such as the increase in morphine to speed up death. Lastly, and the third method, is passive suicide, which is when a doctor withholds or withdraws treatments. When passive euthanasia is performed is rarely considered illegal, this is because patients have the right to refuse treatment in and case.

Physician Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia can to the center stage in 1975 when a medical center in NJ admitted a patient who was already in a comma named Karen Ann Quinlan. At the age of 21, her vital lifelines were being sustained by the proper and necessary machinery to keep her alive. Karen’s parents wanted the hospital to take her off life support, but the hospital refused. The case went to the NJ courts were they upheld the medical centers wishes of sustain her life, but as the case was taken to the Supreme Court of NJ, the decision was reversed and life support was stopped. Ten years later in 1985 Karen Ann Quinlin die after being in the vegetative state for that time period.

To try and adopt any law to permit physician assisted suicide in the United States one must first take a look inside a system that already bares laws permitting this practice. This means we must now take a look inside the Netherlands and see if this practice has become a successful one. The Netherlands has a law that allows physicians to implement Physician Assisted Suicide to patients who are terminally ill, but the patient must be competent, and they have shown that it could work without any abuse. In the Netherlands doctors who directly kill patients or help any patient kill themselves will not be prosecuted by the law as long as they follow certain guidelines. When a physician does assist in a suicide they are then required to report it to the local prosecutor . The guidelines that must be met in order to commence with the assistance are; The patient must be in unbearable pain either physical or emotional (personality), next the patient must be conscious, death requests must be voluntary, the patient must be given alternatives to the suicide, there must be no reasonable solution to the problem, there must be more than one person in the euthanasia decision and only a doctor can euthanize the patient. If the doctors follow these guide lines then the assisted suicide/euthanasia could then be allowed.

The main argument in the process of deciding whether the assisted suicide can be performed is when the doctor has the final decision. The doctors in Holland all band together and make the final decision on if that patient will be euthanized. This then gives the doctors more power on making decisions this then could cause an arousal of ulterior motives to performing these assisted suicides, such as organ donation.

Currently in the United States euthanasia is an ongoing process, In Oregon the public passed a law to permit euthanasia, but the physicians must follow the limited details. Under the "death with Dignity" law a person who is searching for Physician assisted suicide would have to meet certain criteria; the person must be terminally ill, they must have 6 months or less to live, must make to oral requests for dying, the patient must make one written request, the person could not be influenced by depression, the person must be informed of the various alternatives, and then they must wait 15 days after the request is approved by the doctor. If all of these criteria are met then they could receive a prescription of barbiturates that would be strong enough to induce death. Oregon does imply that mercy killing cannot be performed by family members or friends. This would be considered assisted suicide in the light of Dr. Jack Kevorkian by inducing the death of the patient by means of lethal injection and/or carbon monoxide. In the US there are 30 states that criminalize assisted suicide, but the 9th District Court declared unconstitutional that a state criminilize physician assisted suicide for terminally ill patients. The court system said that a person who lived a full life and is now dying should be given the option to die with dignity or live in pain, this decision was condemned by the AMA and Roman Catholic Church.

In conclusion I believe a person has the ultimate right to decide their own fate regardless if the law permits it or not. It is not only the right of the individual who lives in a free society, to choose their fate but it is the prerogative of the person or the family to preserve the honor and quality of life that the dying family member deserves. When the quality of life is decreased to such a point that a persons mental and physical strengths decrease to a point where they have to be taken care of it should then be their choice of the fate of their lives.