Northeastern University Physician Assisted Suicide or Euthanasia Report

Task: You will write a short paper that discusses an ethical issue regarding physician assisted suicide or euthanasia. Your paper needs to discuss an argument, an objection, a response, and an implication. See the “Details” section for information on what exactly your paper needs to do.

Details:

Section 1(Argument): Choose one of the following claims listed below and provide a reason in support of the claim. Also provide a short example (scenario, vignette, thought experiment, etc.) to illustrate this reason. Use concepts from class lectures where helpful, and cite the readings where relevant.

Ethical Claim:

– Physician assisted suicide is not immoral, but active euthanasia is.

– There is no moral difference between active and passive euthanasia.

– Banning physician-assisted suicide is unjustified paternalism.

– We should ban physician-assisted suicide to protect patient autonomy.

– Physician-assisted suicide not be allowed for patients with Alzheimer’s or depression. 

Section 2 (Objection): Articulate an objection to the reasoning you provided in section one. This objection can come from an author we’re read in class, yourself, or an outside source. This does not have to be an objection that you yourself agree with. Also provide a short a short example (scenario, vignette, thought experiment, etc.) to illustrate this objection. Use concepts from class lectures where helpful, and cite readings where relevant.

Section 3 (Response): Explain how someone could defend the claim and reason in section 1 against the objection in section 2. To do this successfully, you need to directly respond the objection and either (a) show how it is logically flawed or factually mistaken, or (b) show how the objection is not sufficient reason for rejecting the claim in section1.

Example: 

Claim: Patients have a right about their own death in the manner that they choose.

Objection: Patients should not have this right because death is evil.

Response: Death is usually evil, but in the case of PAS, patients are choosing it and have determined that their life is not worth living any longer. So death is not taking anything of value from them, as it normally does.