Palliative Care and pas Essay

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Armanie Wilson
Proffessor Weber
English 161
11 March 2014
Take Control Everyone’s days are numbered; we all have a start date, and we all have an end date. It is a proven fact that every two to five seconds a person dies in the world. People die everyday because of various things, such as, shootings, car crashes, severe accidents, heart attacks, cancer, starvation, explosions etc. But, ever so rarely you hear about people choosing to die and having a doctor help them end their life, otherwise known as Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS). There are laws around the world about PAS but only in the United States does each state have its own individual PAS law. To most PAS is just another way of murder or manslaughterand they feel that it decreases the value of human life. But others believe that PAS is an opportunity for a patient to take back the control of their life and express the moral “let me die with my dignity”. But the question is should people have the right to die the same as they have a right to live? All people have a moral right to choose freely what they will do with their bodies as long as they do not inflict harm on others. There are those who oppose PAS for various reasons. Many feel that doctors and families may be prompted to give up on recovery much too early. They feel that if they were to give up on recovery too early and the patient died they might later find a treatment or cure for what caused the patients death. That would put the doctor in an extremely tough position with the family and they may even consider litigation. Challengers to PAS also feel that doctors

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