Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Debate Continues
"This could never be a crime in any society which deems itself enlightened." So said Jack Kevorkian on CBS's "60 Minutes" on November 22, on a segment showing the first nationally televised death by euthanasia in the U.S.
Kevorkian offered the footage to CBS to dramatize his campaign for euthanasia for terminally and chronically ill patients. The film shows him giving a lethal injection in September to 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). Kevorkian is shown ending Mr. Youk's life by injecting Seconal to put him to sleep, followed by a powerful muscle relaxant to stop his breathing and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
Kevorkian says on the segment that he provided the footage to force the hand of Michigan prosecutors. "Either they go or I go," he says. "If I'm acquitted, they go, because they know they'll never convict me. If I'm convicted, I will starve to death in prison, so I will go."
In his book, Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, Michael Manning, M.D. says that both euthanasia and assisted suicide (wherein the patient performs the lethal act) involve the premature death of the patient. He defines euthanasia as an action or omission which causes death in order to end suffering(1). Active euthanasia is the deliberate intervention by someone else to end the person's life(2); passive euthanasia means the withdrawal of medical treatment(2), which is allowable if it is done in order to let the patient die on his own. Euthanasia is either voluntary or involuntary, depending on the person's competency to decide. The crux of the euthanasia/assisted suicide debate is r...
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...ternal Medicine 2240 (Oct. 28, 1996)
Lee v. Oregon, 891 F.Supp. 1429 (D. Or. 1995), vacated on other grounds, 107 F.3d 1382 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 328 (1997).
Manning, Michael,M.D. Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. New York: Paulist Press, 1998.
"Poll Shows More Would Support Law Using Gentler Language," TimeLines (Jan.-Feb. 1994):9
Rachels, James. "Passive and Active Euthanasia Are Equally Acceptable." Euthanasia. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1989.
Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 2262 n. 7 (1997.
-- -- --. 117 S. Ct. at 2272, quoting United States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 558. 1979.
Washington Post, April 4, 1996.
Wennberg, Robert. Terminal Choices: Euthanasia, Suicide, and the Right to Die. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Co.,1990.
Throughout history there have been many poets and some have succeeded while other didn’t have the same luck. But in history e.e. Cummings has stunned people with his creativity and exposure to the real world and not living in the fantasy people imagine they live in. Cummings was a great poet, and was able to make his own way of writing while he was also involved greatly in the modernist movement. But he demonstrates all his uniqueness in all and every poem, delivering people with knowledge and making them see the world with different eyes as in the poem “Since feeling is first”.
...er emotional vulnerability send the reader on a mystery through a variety of people, places, and even time. With a quirky personality, the young heroine`s fearlessness and curiosity, on top of her excellent benefit of age sends her on an exceptional adventure while hints of familial love buried deep down begin to surface near the novel’s end. The poet, E.E. Cummings, is a sophisticated lover who speaks devotedly of his beloved and her mysterious power over him. With a loyal and passionate heart, the ardent poet marvels at the inner mystery, concluding that the mysteries of love and nature are best left alone because if one was to know precisely why they love another, some passion would be stolen. The curiosity, impetus, imagination, and bottomless passion in both narrators reveal that there is much more to mystery, adventure, and love than what meets the eye.
Yet those who have the most power to change them are silent. The American promise seems to be fading out of the reach of the masses of participants and perhaps Americans no longer feel the benefits associated with the Social contract. And for those who have never felt the benefit, there simply was simply never a social contract. According to (2015) according to the social contract theory; “there are three vulnerable groups, nonhuman animals, future generations and oppressed populations,” (Dr. Khalili perhaps also understood that this applied to the helpless aged and dying). “The moral rules will let these individuals have no claim on the social contract, and could be treated in anyway whatsoever” (2015, p.102).This is said to be unacceptable, but it is clearly the American way. It appeared that Dr. Khalili consciously prepared for this initiative. The fact that Dr. Kevorkian’s was arrested was a judgment that the American social contract theory did not judge the actions of Dr. Khalili favorably. Yet, in the silence of death, Dr. Khalili spoke for those who could not speak for themselves, and perhaps, Dr. Khalili achieves some heroism status with his defiance of ultimate control over his life by a system that was unjust, because it has little regard for the vulnerable
Once Dr. Kevorkian could no longer obtain the needed drugs for using this machine he started using a machine called the Mer...
Rotella, Guy. "Nature, Time, and Transcendence in Cummings' Later Poems." Critical Essays on E.E. Cummings. Ed. Guy Rotella. Boston: G.K. Hall and Co., 1984.
Jack Kevorkian was a doctor who assisted terminally ill patients to commit suicide. He believed that they had the right to die in an appropriate way; to die with dignity. He therefore invented a machine (called thanatron—a Greek word for death machine) which could take away his patients’ lives painlessly and efficiently, all they had to do was to push a button and their lives would be ended by either deadly injection or carbon monoxide poisoning. There had been at least one hundred patients who tried and died in this method. Dr. Kevorkian was charged several times with murder in these deaths. Lucky for him, a judge dismissed one of his charges because there was no evidence of murder. Jury did not find him guilty either. Nevertheless, he received numerous critics from medical professionals and media. Some people considered him as a hero while others saw him as an evil person. Not few questioned his intention; did he really care about ending his patients’ sufferings? Now that the “Dr. Death” died, all of this debate probably doesn’t matter anymore. But if it was up to me, I would most definitely not going to let him go with this easily because the way I see it, what he did was not right.
Attention Getter: Jack Kevorkian is a well-known doctor in the medical field who gained his nickname, “Dr. Death” after being know to bring up controversial issues and ideas related to death. Finding a way to use organs from death row in ill patients, or using the blood from recently killed soldiers in other soldiers in need of blood transfusion are just a couple of these controversial ideas. He was arresting and tried for helping over 130 men and women end their lives via assisted suicide, and ended up being charged with 2nd degree murder. Dr. Kevorkian famously said, “I would not want to live with a tube in my neck and not be able to move a finger. I wouldn 't - that to me is not life”. When not given the backstory or nature of this quote, most people would agree that being
So begins No Thanks, a book of poetry written by the already well-established Edward Estlin Cummings. When most people think of poetry, certain vocabulary comes to mind. Imagery. Rhyme. Meter. Flow. Figurative language. When the poetry of E.E. Cummings is mentioned, these stereotypical poetic techniques are forgotten. Instead, the mind focuses on Cummings' technique of avoiding technique. The lack of capitalization and nonstandard punctuation most likely begin the list of Cummings' nonrules in the minds of many. Sadly, the knowledge of...
Like every marketed love story out there, the poem starts off with two souls who secretly admire each other, yet are too afraid to admit it. In a society that at that time would quite possibly think lowly of the match, for why else would the two be so shy with their affections? Keeping their feelings to themselves seems to be the best solution. Of course, one can argue that the reason Isabella and Lorenzo are so hesitant to share their affections, is only natural of two human beings that are not sure of each other’s feelings and views. Whether or not they fear each other’s reactions of a confession of love, love cannot be kept inside, for it is a force that stirs the mind up.
Cummings' peculiar method of using syntax to convey hidden meaning is extremely effective. The reader does not simply read and forget Cummings' ideas; instead, he must figure out the hidden meaning himself. In doing this, he feels contentment, and thus retains the poem's idea for a more extended period of time. Cummings' ideogram poems are puzzles waiting to be solved.
Edward Estlin Cummings, abbreviated to E. E. Cummings, although he was more popularly known in all lowercase letters as e. e. cummings, was an admirably influential American poet, author, playwright, and essayist. His renowned experimentation with poetic form and language in order to create his own personal style is his most prominent accomplishment. Often, he revamped and combined words to create new ones of his own style and in his own likeness. Cummings also bent grammatical and linguistic rules to accomplish his own purposes; he incorporated the usage of words like “if” and “because” as nouns, something odd and unheard of in his time period. He was first sneered at, jeering faces refusing to accept his twisted style as poetry, but quickly his work rose to such a revered status that it shone alongside the ubiquitous writings of the great Robert Frost. The entire collection of Cummings work includes a huge number of approximately 2900 poems, as well as several novels, and countless diary entries of eloquence and skill from even the earliest years of his childhood. E. E. Cummings was, in truth, a genius, for he spent his time inventing new ways of arranging poetry in certain line types, intercepting idea with parentheses and writing backwards and in spiraling loops to emphasize his intricately concealed main points. In his time, this was extremely uncouth and unheard of, and as he steadily grew to become a famous name worldwide, more wanted to read his works. The underlying meanings in his poems were so obscure, it was hard to see past them the very first time one laid eyes on them, as it was to see past the psychical barriers E. E. Cummings hid behind when in public, and sometimes even with those he truly cared about. This sec...
Through his verse, E. E. Cummings shows readers his natural inclination towards living through emotions and his justification of why his way of living comes "first" (line 1) to living through thought. Living with his heart feels better to E. E. Cummings in comparison to living through his mind, and so it is better. He has also determined that "the best gesture of his brain" (line 11) could never live up to the actions of love or true feeling. Yet, "since feeling comes first" (line 1) the thought must come second. This poet has shown readers that he has an understanding of life, but he could not begin to understand without the gift of thought.
Whose life is it, anyway? Euthanasia is a word that means good death. Euthanasia normally implies that the act must be initiated by the person who wishes to commit suicide. But, some people define euthanasia to include both voluntary and involuntary termination of life. Physician assisted suicide is when a physician supplies information and/or the means of committing suicide (lethal dose of sleeping pills or carbon monoxide gas) to a person, so that they can easily terminate their own life.
Euthanasia, or mercy killing, can be defined as the "intentional termination of life by another at the explicit request of the person who dies" (Euthanasia). The infamous Dr. Kevorkian is known for assisting many people in their suicides. He was eventually tried and convicted for his role in this area. What crime did he commit? The people whom he assisted sought him out to help them have a calm and peaceful death under their own control. During Dr. Kevorkian's trial, questions were raised suggesting ...
Cummings, E. E. Poems 1923 ‚ 1954. New York : Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1926.