My topic for the research paper is assisted suicide. This is a touchy subject to many and a difficult subject to justify. One of the sources I found discusses the subject in relation to doctors to patients. One point it makes is that it is illegal for doctors to assist patients in taking their lives. A quote mentioned says, "Dr. Jack Kevorkian gained world attention by assisting in several suicides to dying patients; he was sentences to over 60 years for his efforts, despite the gratitude of the patients and their families (Messerli)." I find this hard to debate, it is difficult to understand that if a patient is suffering a doctor cannot help them relieve the pain, although the family and patient want them to. It then goes into discussing laws in different states and how some are tring to legalize the process.

Another article I read about this topic was an online journal article. This article was clearly against assisted suicide and basically referred to it just as "suicide." They feel liek suffering from an illness can be fixed another way through medicine. I do agree with this idea. If someone is suffering they should not have to deal with this. However, they also discuss the otehr side of the argument. Throughout the article is provides definitions of what others believe is right or wrong. one thing this athor says is, "assisted death occurs when someone intentionally assists in causing another's voluntary death (Gunderson)." This is basically the overall definition of assisted suicide. I liked reading this article because it was not all one sided and it gave good statistics and other people's ideas about assisted suicide.

Gunderson, Martin. "A Right to Suicide Does Not Entail the Right to Assisted Death." Journal of Medical Ethics 23.1 (1997): 51-54. JSTOR. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. http://www.jstor.org/.

Messerli, Joe. "Should an Incurably-ill Patient Be Able to Commit Physician-assisted Suicide?" 03 April 2007. Web. 12 Apr. 2010. http://www.balancedpolitics.org/assisted_suicide.htm.