Physician-Assisted Suicide: Taking Health Into Your Own Hands

Physician-Assisted Suicide: 
Taking Health Into Your Own Hands
By Ziana Collins

Introduction:
While trying to find topics to write about for this entry, I tried to look back on topics I had learned about and didn't completely understand at first. Upon this reflection, I dug up one of my core memories from freshman year of high school. To set the stage: my family was an active participant in our local parish, a Roman Catholic church. As a child and teenager, this meant mass every week and youth group at least once a week. At these youth group sessions we'd talk about what you would typically expect from a religious organization, but one week we deviated from that to discuss the hot-topic (at the time) of euthanasia. If you can recall, around 2014 there was a patient with a terminal diagnosis who was choosing to end their own life due to their diagnosis. This was all over the news and was the first time I heard about physician-assisted suicide, and ultimately opened me up to idea.

Disclaimer: I am personally an advocate for physician-assisted suicide in patients who have terminal diagnoses. Throughout this blog post, many of topics I discuss will be in favor of this treatment option, however, I am always open to opposing opinions! I know this can be a polarizing topic in healthcare, but as we have learned in school, every treatment has risk and benefits and the benefits should outweigh the risks. I especially encourage you to bring up any negatives or risks associated with physician-assisted suicide, as I may have not considered those before.

Is Physician-Assisted Suicide Treatment or Murder?
When asking this question, I think its important to understand what lens you're approaching it from. Since this is an opinion-based post, I would like to share with you what lens I am approaching it from for more context:
  • In the United States, medical treatments can be very expensive. For people with terminal diagnoses, although the may not be receiving care to "cure" their disease, many still receive palliative care until the end of their life. Imagine: you know you are going to die from your disease but you still have to pay for medications and treatment to make you as comfortable as possible until you pass away.
  • Often, for conditions like cancer, treatment is difficult. It takes a physical and emotional toll on you, its expensive, and its not guaranteed that you will achieve remission by receiving treatment. For people in my life who have gone through cancer treatment and achieved remission, many of them say that if their cancer came back they would prefer to allow it to run its course instead of going through treatment again (not to say this speaks for all cancer survivors).
  • There are many things as patients we cannot control. We as the patient cannot control our copays, formularies, in-network doctors, or even cost of basic healthcare. I believe having the option to "opt-out" of this cycle is important for patients who have a terminal diagnosis. They did not choose to get sick, however they should be able to choose how their disease "controls" their life.
From this lens, I do believe that physician-assisted suicide is treatment, and should be an option for patients who would regardless pass away from their disease.

Potential Oversights
Since I am approaching this topic from a lens of physician-assisted suicide is treatment, its also important for me to acknowledge the negatives and risks associated with it. We consider these risks with medications and procedures, and I do not believe physician-assisted suicide is exempt from this. I can see how it would be difficult for healthcare providers to make a choice if a patient is eligible for this treatment, especially because suffering is subjective and every person has a different threshold. Should a patient who has a small chance of living be offered this option, even if death is more likely? Or should it only be offered to patients who are 100% going to die from their illness? Where do we draw the lines for hidden illnesses, such as mental health disorders? Can doctors being liable for possibly making "the wrong call" when offering this as a treatment option to patients?

Final Thoughts
Although there are positives and negatives to physician-assisted suicide, I think its important that healthcare providers (and eventually society as a whole) start the dialogue about it. If we only bring attention to it when a patient is advocating for it, that is not enough to create standards of care for these patients wanting to die with dignity. Whether we see it as "murder" or "treatment," talking about it is the best way to get the healthcare profession on the same page about it.

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