Gradually patients began to seek the right to choose to receive treatment or to refuse further treatment if they did not want to prolong their agony rather than the doctor getting to make the decision. Thus, in what became a groundbreaking law, in 1976, California became the first state to allow terminally ill patients to die when such a patient chooses to withdraw further treatment. ... It has allowed the public to support the idea of having the right-to-die, favoring possible physician assisted suicide when appropriate and has led to patient legal rights including the ability, through medic...

• Word Count: 5515
• Approx Pages: 22
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

In response to this, some medical schools have started teaching students how to break bad news to patients.11 The Ethics in Medicine Web site at the University of Washington School of Medicine contains a six-step protocol titled "Breaking Bad News." ... But in some cases it is only after a treatment has been started that a proper diagnosis and prognosis can be made.1 Treatment that can be withheld can also be withdrawn. ... Decisions for writing a DNR order are based on the patient's preference, determinations of medical futility, and the patient's quality of life.8 The presence ...

• Word Count: 2553
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: Undergraduate

From a medical perspective euthanasia is wrong because it directly violates the Hippocratic Oath that defines the profession. ... His writings not only had a great impact on the content of Greek medical thought, but also on the ethics of medical practice. ... By making this treatment legal, pro-life activists believe it would be the first step in allowing doctor's to make their own choices in determining if a person's life is worth living. ... An advance directive contains instructions regarding medical treatment requested by the patient, to guide health care decisions in which th...

• Word Count: 2799
• Approx Pages: 11
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Treatments to Prolong Life Many treatments and machines are able to extend the period of time in which a patient is alive, but is there any dignity left at the end? ... Most patients are typically more comfortable without synthetic treatment, anyway. Feeding tubes are among the most common treatments that will extend a patient's life. ... Legal Issues Regarding Euthanasia Three legal means are used to express an individual's desire to withdraw or withhold treatment if he or she were to become incompetent or terminally ill. ... The doctors specifically said their medical values permi...

• Word Count: 2895
• Approx Pages: 12
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Abstract Modern medical technology has made it possible to extend the lives of many far beyond when they would have died in the past. ... Passive euthanasia refers to someone's helping another person to die by withholding or withdrawing life- sustaining treatment, including the administration of food and water. ... Finally, in the early 1970s, other voluntary euthanasia societies were formed in the Netherlands and in Australia "as the two edged blade of modern medical technology became obvious. ... The medical experience has taught that the incurable man may ask for his end under the ...

• Word Count: 3258
• Approx Pages: 13
• Grade Level: High School

In opposition to this idea of assisted suicide are many physicians and medical professionals. In a statement made by the American Medical Association, they said, "The intentional termination of the life of one human being by another, mercy killing is contrary to that for which the medical profession stands and is contrary to the policy of the American Medical Association"(Weir, 34). ... These treatments allow people to go on and finish up the remainder of their lives with comfort and ease. ...

• Word Count: 2597
• Approx Pages: 10
• Grade Level: High School