Revised Annotated Bibliography

Dobsha, Steven, Linda Gazini, and Elizabeth Goy. Why Oregon Patients Request Assisted
Death: Family Member's Views. Journal of General Internal Medicine 23.2
(Feb 2008): 154:57. Print.
This article was written by two medical doctors and one PhD scholar. It was
published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in February 2008. The
authors wanted to learn from family members why their loved ones requested
physician-assisted suicide. They did a study to find this out. They sent out
83 questionnaires to families of someone who died of physician-assisted suicide.
The family members rated the importance of reasons their loved ones
requested physician-assisted suicide. They found that physical symptoms
were actually lower on the list and wanting to control the circumstances of death
and to die at home were the most important. Also important, were the worries
about loss of dignity, independence, and quality of life. The least important
reasons had to do with depression, financial concerns and social support. This
study was important because it brought up issues that if interventions could be made
to help patients maintain control, independence and self-care in a home
environment maybe physician-assisted suicide would not be needed. I used this
article because it gave very useful information about why patients wanted
physician-assisted suicide in the first place. It also gave some hope as to what
could possibly be done to avoid having to have physician-assisted suicide at all. It
gave the hope of possible alternatives.

Golden, Marilyn. The Danger of Assisted Suicide Laws. CNN News Source. 14 Oct. 2014.
Web. 30 Oct. 2014.
Marilyn Golden is a senior policy analyst with the Disability Rights Education and
Defense Fund. She published this article for CNN on October 14, 2014. The
author approached the assisted suicide topic by writing about Brittany Mayard, who
was dying of brain cancer and moved to Oregon so she could die with dignity.
The author felt this case had given assisted suicide a lot of attention and, according
to her, for the wrong reasons. She said that the legalization of assisted suicide
appears acceptable when the focus is in on just the individual but legalization would
put many people at harm if it went through. She boldly wrote that assisted
suicide is the cheapest treatment for a terminal illness, thus possibly leading to
coercion. The author is an advocate for people with disabilities. She, herself, is in
a wheelchair, so she understands what it's like to live with having a serious
disability. Her situation gave her credibility. I used her article to understand what
opposing viewpoints are out there and to counter my opinions. I also talked about
Brittany Maynard, although I used a different approach.
Harned, Mary. The Dangers of Assisted Suicide No Longer Theoretical. Americans United
for Life. 2012. Print.
Mary E. Harned, a lawyer, wrote this article in 2012. It pointed out the dangers of
physician-assisted suicide, ranging from untreated depression to elderly abuse to the
slippery slope of outright euthanasia. She believed that when offered personal
support and palliative care, most people adapt and continue life in ways they may
not have thought they could. While she agreed that many terminally ill people are

in severe pain, she countered with the statistic that 95-98% of such pain can be
relieved. She also said that most patients who request assisted suicide on the basis
of pain will withdraw the request after pain management, depression and other
concerns are addressed. While her article was an opposing viewpoint to mine, I
found it interesting. It gave me ideas as to how the other side thinks and to how they
might question things I wrote about.
Zukowski, Carissa. Physician-assisted Suicide should be Legalized. The John Hopkins
Newsletter. Jhunewsletter.com. April 2014. Web.
Carissa Zukowski, a student at Johns Hopkins University, published this article in
their newsletter on April 22, 2014. She stated upfront that the AMA (American
Medical Association) is against physician-assisted suicide because it would cause
too many complications. The author believed that any change will bring with it
adversity but that doesn't make it unworthy of the change. She stated how health
is not just physical, but that it is a condition of well-being, and includes both the
mind and the body. She put some facts about physician-assisted suicide that many
people are probably not aware of. This article didn't use a lot of emotional
reasoning but used facts that make sense. I used her logic to support my thesis.