"I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art." Physicians are abusing there practice. They are going against this Hippocratic Oath which forbids assisted suicide and serves as a reminder to physicians of the power they have over their patients. Legalizing physician assisted suicide and abandoning the Hippocratic Oath, would weaken the guidelines that help doctors separate their personal judgements from what is best for their patients. I believe that assisted suicide should not be legalized. Physician-assisted suicide undermines medical ethics, it is unable to create any safeguards, and opens the door to euthanasia abuses. .
Daniel Callahan believes, "It is not within the power of medicine- and probably never will be- to master life and death and to control nature. It ought never to be within the moral power of medicine to use its skill to bring about death. A medicine that took on that role would soon corrupt itself, inevitably falling into abuse and assuming a kind of power it ought not to have, turning to medicine to relieve us of the weight and meaning of life. I agree with Daniel Callahan that medicine does not and cannot have that kind of wisdom, and it surely would not gain it by acting as our agent in death. .
I understand that assisted suicide can show campassion for the dying. For some dying people with severe suffering assisted suicide may be seen as a compassionate act because it ends a life that has lost meaning. But doctors should relieve pain and be a comforting presence. Physicians should not think lethal injection or suicide pills to be the best way. Doctors are mistakening the nature of medicine, as the lethal tools of death.
There are considerations of contemporary economic forces affecting health care in our country. General Walter Dellinger said during his 1997 argument against assisted suicide, "The least costly treatment for any illness is lethal medication.
