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Sociological analyses of suicide
The morality of suicide
Ethical dilemmas in assisted suicide
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I believe you bring up an excellent and important point in regards to this case; how parents must feel dealing with the terminal illness and death of their child. I think that consideration is what makes understanding Robert Latimer difficult . It brings up a lot of emotion and for good reason. I understand why it invokes oppostion, but I feel assumptions are made about him that aren't fair. We don't know if he feels guilt or was relieved to have her gone. From what he says, he feels confident about his decision. So to evaulate from a Utilitarian perspective, he is certain he choose the scenario which caused his daughter less unhappiness and suffering. For me where this story is complicated, is that he didn't consider the societal perspective.
The case had a many important questions to it. In one question: is physician-assisted suicide morally, ethically, legally correct, and/or fair to anyone?
This is a fascinating case because it presents the distinction between a patient’s right to refuse treatment and a physician’s assistance with suicide. Legally, Diane possessed the right to refuse treatment, but she would have faced a debilitating, painful death, so the issue of treatment would be a moot point. It would be moot in the sense that Diane seemed to refuse treatment because the odds were low, even if she survived she would spend significant periods of time in the hospital and in pain, and if she didn’t survive she would spend her last days in the hospital. If Diane were to merely refuse treatment and nothing else (as the law prescribes) than she would not have been able to avoid the death which she so dearly wanted to avoid.
On October 24th 1993 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Robert Latimer was convicted of second degree murder for the intentional killing of his 12 year-old daughter, Tracy Latimer, who suffered a severe form of cerebral palsy since she was born. Tracy endured seizures five to six times a day, could not take pain medication because it would interfere with her epilepsy medication, and underwent painful surgeries throughout her life to stabilize her body weight and correct spinal abnormalities. Just weeks before her death, her doctors planned to surgically remove her hipbone, which had become dysfunctional as a result of a previous surgery and spinal complication, and would have taken at least a year of recovery and been extremely painful. Her father,
1 Identification The central main ethical issue in the life after death case is about whether or not Mrs. Jamison should have a child . Mrs. Jamison wants to have a child , but Mr. Jamison died , and no one knows if he would have wanted to have a child or if he would have wanted his wife to have to support a child alone . There are multiple issues at play in this case . One issue would be if Mrs. Jamison chooses to have a child the child will grow up with only one parent unlike the majority of children , it could cause the child to face some issues at school . There is also the issue of having to care for the child and balancing work . Another issue is that Mr. Jamison 's position on the issue is uncertain . There is no written document as
This case comes down to: Does the written living will or the proxy named in the living will have the louder voice in end-of-life care discussions? In this case, the voice of the proxy won. In the best cases, such decisions should be made together at the time of the creation of the living will with both the patient and the proxy. If this occurred, the son would be more on the same page with the concerns for his mother’s end of life care. Another way of solving the issue of the possibility of the woman’s life changing over the past seven years, would be having a way for the woman to acknowledge that thoughts are still the same by updating/resigning the living will
... was doing what he thought was best for her and what she wanted. We have the right to live why can’t we have the right to died when it’s nothing left of us to live.
Her psychological damage done from the mistreatment by her mother and having a baby non-consensually should be taken into consideration. None of these make murder okay; However she was clearly immature and scared at the time. It was a mistake that she made when she was very young. If she had remained in jail for 50 years, she would be a senior citizen when released. She would miss the majority of her life and her youth to pursuit major accomplishments and redeem herself. Taking away one’s the opportunity to contribute to the world or pursue their goals would almost be taking away his/her life. Our society should promote the value of life and its potential. Originally, I did not think of the sentence in that way, but the class discussion invoked thought. Recently turning 18 years old, I slowly fathomed the magnitude of a near life sentence for a crime committed as a teenager. Why should one’s opportunity be taken away if he/she has the desire and potential to redeem himself/herself? I came to the conclusion that her redemption attempt deserved a shot. All people, especially young ones, deserve a second chance and allowing her to pursue her degree gave her
The ethical issues in this case are who’s responsible for making the health care decisions for Mr. Woods a patient that would never regain consciousness and will die in about 2 to 10 years while on the ventilator after having a heart attack. It seems as if Mr. Woods never completed a living will, so the Kentucky Supreme Court appointed a guardian. According to the book, this is allowed by the Living Will Directive Act which allows a judicially appointed guardian or surrogate to remove life support. To my understanding, the hospital ethics committee recommended that Mr. Woods be removed for life support, and the guardian asked for approval. Ethics committee should serve as a legal guardian when there is no guardian appointed, and the family
Tracy’s father was faced with an unfortunate decision, and in his decision, I cannot condemn him for his actions. Now saying this I don’t believe what he did was particularly the right decision or particularly the wrong decision. As for his life sentence, it’s quite outrageous. My reasoning for this is because of his actual intentions and his mental rationale in doing so. He claims that he did it out of love and mercy, which I whole-heartedly agree with. With Tracy’s condition already being a significant trouble to live with and the fact that her surgeries brought her much pain and suffering is something that would be hard to bear. They claimed that she had the mental capacity of a four month old baby, so in that sense, it’s almost like watching an innocent baby constantly in pain. One part of the case says that Tracy’s mother believed that the many surgeries especially the one that removed her upper thigh bone were not surgeries but mutilations. I can see why her mother would think this. I can only imagine what it would be like to watch your loved one constantly be mutilated and going under the knife. Surgery and visits to the doctor alone can be stressful enough in itself, let alone ones that can be perceived as mutilations. Additionally the case states that Tracy had 5-6 seizures a day, which would imaginably be hard to watch and care for. Ultimately, I cannot in any way condemn Tracy’s
The mother-son case illustrates that there are more factors in play than just the two that Thomson presents in her thesis. Thomson’s conditions by themselves cannot explain every situation. The relationship between the people involved can also affect whether a decision is morally permissible or not. If that relationship entails that one person is emotionally bound and ethically responsible for the security and well-being of the other, the first cannot knowingly contribute to the death of the second. Thomson’s thesis must be modified to include this condition as well.
On April 15, 1975, the Quinlan family received a tragic phone call at approximately 2am; their daughter, Karen Ann, was in a coma. Earlier that evening, Quinlan was at a party and consumed drugs and alcohol. She became unconscious and eventually fell into an irreversible coma. She was conditioned to be in a persistent vegetative state. Since she was unable to recover from her coma, Quinlan’s parents requested her life support to be withheld. The removal of life support was more complicated than what the Quinlan family imagined it to be. They had to take the case to court to have the request approved. The first round in Superior court, the Quinlans lost. Eventually, the family took the case to the New Jersey Supreme Court. The court ruled that Quinlan’s father is appointed as her guardian and can make any decision regarding her care. It took the family over a year to have the approval to remove their daughter from life support; it took five days for Karen Ann Quinlan to be weaned off her respirator. Miraculously, she was able to breathe on her own for the next nine years until she died of pneumonia. This case led to the creation of the “living will” and required medical institutions to allow patients to live their last stage in life with dignity and respect (Karen Ann Quinlan Hospice
It is important to interpret the situations leading up to an outcome, as it allows for a better understanding of what has occurred and why it has occurred. “On October 24th, 1993, Tracy Latimer was found dead. She had died [under the care of her father]. Mr. Latimer confessed to the crime and admitted that he had killed Tracy, [by placing her in his truck and connection a hose from the truck’s exhaust pipe to the cab]” (Wikipedia, para 4). Tracy passed away from high amount of carbon monoxide. Mr. Latimer was “found guilty of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 10 years” (Wikipedia, para 4). It is important to note that Mr. Latimer did not commit this crime out of senselessness but because he wanted to place Tracy out of her misery. Jean Jacques Rousseau, a famous French philosopher, based a handful of his theoretical perspectives on the Spirit of the Law. He believed that people deserved freedom. Laws are vague and rely on the interpretation of individuals. It is evident that the sentence given to Mr. Latimer was not interpreted through the eyes of a father but a criminal. Although he did break...
As a result, when she was told, Mrs. Roth said, “We cannot let it live, for her sake and ours.” On the day she left the hospital with the child, Mrs. Roth mixed a lethal dose of a tranquilizing drug with the baby’s formula and fed it to her. The child died that evening. Mrs. Roth and her husband were charged with infanticide. During Court Mrs. Roth admitted to the killing but said she had done the right thing. “I know I could not let my baby live like that,” she said. “If only she had been mentally abnormal, she would not have known her fate. But she had a normal brain. She would have known. Placing her in an institution might have helped me, but it wouldn’t have helped her.” The jury, found Mrs. Roth and her husband guilty of the charge.
Depression is a hard disease to battle but yet, she had not tried all the medical options before opting for euthanasia in the end. The fact that physicians such as Wel Distelman got awards for being pro-euthanasia is still mind boggling. More resources should be allocated towards solving mental health issues and perhaps finding cures for diseases such as depression and dementia that may lead to the rebuilding of our society. Despite Tom 's suicidal thoughts in his early life, he found something to live for, and this shows that depression can be overcome. Perhaps if his mother had tried to reconcile with him and his sister before she died, maybe she would have changed her mind and had a reason to live, we will ever know. Euthanasia is still a topic that warrants a lot of debates, those for it and those against
Latimer did was morally wrong. But, when an individual is so severely disable with a poor quality of life and suffers from ongoing pain, one can then justify that it is morally right to assist with mercy killing. The morally wrong about this case was that Tracy did not have a choice in whether she wanted to live or die. It was all decided by her father that taking her life was the best solution for her. In other words, Mr. Latimer decided that Tracy would be better off dead instead of having another surgery. If the Supreme Court did not overturn Mr. Latimer conviction to second degree murder it would have set a bad precedent for people with disabilities. I agreed with The Council of Canadians with Disabilities that giving any lesser penalty will put thousands of people with disabilities in more danger of violence and death. Failure to be responsible for such crime against people with disabilities would be the wickedest form of discrimination. Tracy was placed on this earth for a purpose which we may not understand, but no one knew exactly what her wishes would have