Should "Death with Dignity" be Allowed?

Last year, it was revealed to us on Lifenews.com from "Oregon Assisted Suicide Deaths Hit Record High" that the rate of suicides for 2012 in the state of Oregon reached a high of 709 people. Of those people, however, 77 of those suicides were committed with assistance at hand.

According to Dictionary.com, the definition of assisted suicide, or better known as "death with dignity", is "suicide facilitated by another person, especially a physician, who organizes the logistics of the suicide." In today's age, we now have the medicine and technology to prolong lives. But is prolonging lives just a positive way of saying we're "dragging out death for those who desire it"? If assisted suicide were to be applied to the rest of the world, then the world wouldn’t drop dead from “death with dignity”.

From a scientific viewpoint on assisted suicide, there are many studies that have been explored upon within the United States. However, from an article on Danariely.com written by Arjun Khanna, one of the more infamous cases of a study on assisted suicide would have to be “The Oregon Paradox”. From this study in 2010, a group of 91 terminally-ill patients were each given the choice of whether they would choose to take a lethal injection, a chemical combination that would put the patient to sleep, stop the heart and ultimately kill the person in a peaceful manner. From this test, only 61 of the patients, 2/3 of the total amount of patients, actually took the lethal injection. From the article, it’s stated how, when given the choice of ending their lives, the ones who chose to keep living wanted to choose their own time to end their lives without having to make a decision on the spot. From this, "patients can now wake up every day with the comfort of knowing that they do not have to suffer through pain or stress they might find intolerable."

Today, there are currently four states in the United States that have legalized the use of assisted suicide, those states being Montana, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington. From those states, many tests similar to “The Oregon Paradox” were taken place in studying the “death with dignity” act, helping us get a better understanding of what goes into the decisions and thoughts behind assisted suicide.

If the United States, or even the rest of the world, were to allow the rights of “death with dignity”, would it matter in the end? According to most, they’ll say that their deaths were done on their own time.