Euthanasia: No Human Life Should End by Unnatural Means
Euthanasia, the medical term for assisted suicide or mercy killing, is an issue still being debated almost a hundred years after a proposal to legalize it in Ohio. The medical community was in turmoil even before its legal proposition, unable to decide amongst themselves how to deal with the issue. The same arguments still rage today, though the public is more aware of the issue thanks to high-profile court cases, like the trial of Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Some claim that the terminally ill have a “right to die”, but no human life should end by unnatural means.
As medical technology continues to expand at an astounding rate, doctors are finding treatment for diseases and ailments that would have been untreatable a mere five years ago. The main selling point of euthanasia seems to be to put terminally ill patients out of their misery—but what happens when the medical community finds a way to cure the formerly fatal disease? If the patient is still alive, the new treatments may alleviate their sufferings entirely, but if the patient has already given up hope then they may have unwittingly sacrificed several years of their life.
Advocates of euthanasia that make comparisons of terminally ill patients to animals that are “put to sleep” when they grow old and weak insult the people they describe. Animals do not understand why their bodies no longer work correctly, can take no preventative measures in keeping their bodies healthy, and cannot share the experiences of a lifetime with others.
Suicide has always been a touchy subject for debate. One of the leading causes of death in America, over 30,000 people take their lives every year. Our society’s concern for the people ...
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..., by banning its legal use, hammering out strict guidelines as to what is and what is not considered assisted suicide, and then enforcing those guidelines to the full extent of the law. If we can do this, the argument of how to deal with euthanasia will end, at least in the United States.
Works Cited
“Let Death Be My Dominion.” The Economist. Oct 16, 1999. 353 (1999): 89-92. Proquest. Online. 19 Nov. 1999.
Daniel, Caroline. “Killing with kindness.” New Statesman. 126 (1997): 16(3). Infotrac. Online. 19 Nov. 1999
Emanuel, Ezekiel J. “Death’s Door.” The New Republic. 220 (1999): 15-16. Proquest. Online. 19 Nov. 1999.
Gillon, Raanan. “When Doctors Might Kill Their Patients.” British Medical Journal. 318 (1999): 1431-1432. Proquest. Online. 19 Nov. 1999.
“Suicide.” Clinical Reference Systems. Jul (1999): 1421. Infotrac. Online. 2 Dec. 1999.
In many ways, writers Harper Lee and Truman Capote made an odd couple. She was shy and reclusive and only wrote two novels in her lifetime. He was a prolific writer who embraced his celebrity status and lived a life of jet-setting glamour. Yet the two were good friends for years, having met at age 5 as neighbors in Monroeville, Alabama. Lee would prove indispensable to Capote in the research of his most famous book, In Cold Blood. Despite her help, however, Capote gave her no credit
Nance, William L. “The Worlds of Truman Capote.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Vol. 13. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1975. 137-139.
Truman Capote was born Truman Streckfus Persons, in New Orleans September 30th 1924. His parents got a divorce when he was four and his mother later remarried and took on the last name of his stepfather. Capote's childhood was extremely insecure. He was handed back and forth between relatives. When Capote was a child he started to write to deal with the loneliness. At age ten, Capote made up his mind to become a professional writer. Because he knew what he wanted to do with his life, Capote shied away from formal schooling. (Breit) By his mid teenage years he was technically accomplished writer. He stopped going to formal school when he was seventeen. He received a job at the New Yorker magazine. There he was just an errand boy but was noticed because of his mannerisms. During the early stages of World War II, Capote's interests still focused on his writing. (Norden p162) In June 1945, his short story 'Miraim'; brought him a lot of attention. It l...
Inge, M. Thomas, ed. Truman Capote: Conversations. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississippi, 1987. 40. Web. 5 Apr 2014.
As a young child, Truman Capote was plagued with distress. His father left and his mother was an alcoholic. He was neglected until he was adopted by his stepfather and attended several different schools while he was
The issue at hand is whether physician-assisted suicide should be legalized for patients who are terminally ill and/or enduring prolonged suffering. In this debate, the choice of terms is central. The most common term, euthanasia, comes from the Greek words meaning "good death." Sidney Hook calls it "voluntary euthanasia," and Daniel C. Maguire calls it "death by choice," but John Leo calls it "cozy little homicides." Eileen Doyle points out the dangers of a popular term, "quality-of-life." The choice of terms may serve to conceal, or to enhance, the basic fact that euthanasia ends a human life. Different authors choose different terms, depending on which side of the issue they are defending.
In the United States, euthanasia should be legalized. In the year of 1992, Chris Docker wrote about an elderly woman going through the last painful stages of her life. Docker shared that “Mrs. Boyes' was so ill that she "screamed like a dog" if anyone touched her… when she repeatedly requested to die, Dr. Cox finally gave her an injection of potassium chloride, bestowing on her the boon of a peaceful death so many of us feel we are entitled to” (Docker). This unfortunate situation is presented to many doctors across the US. With euthanasia currently being illegal, they cannot provide proper care for their patients. Euthanasia can spare many people of their undesirable agony they face close to their passing. Too many people are suffering from a terminal illness and wanting to be put out of their misery; therefore, euthanasia should be made legal and enforced nationwide.
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The Oxford English Dictionary defines euthanasia as “the action of inducing a gentle and easy death” (Oxford English Dictionary). Many people around the world would like nothing more than to end their lives because they are suffering from painful and lethal diseases; suffering people desperately seek doctors to help them end their lives. Many people see euthanasia as murder, so euthanasia is illegal in many countries. Euthanasia is an extremely controversial issue that has many complex factors behind it including medical costs, murder and liberty rights. Should people have the rights to seek euthanasia from doctors who are well trained in dealing with euthanasia?
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Neglect and painful insecurity tainted both Truman Capote and Perry Smith’s childhoods, resulting in common fears and experiences that Capote translates in his writing of In Cold Blood. Truman Capote lacked a stable childhood upbringing, internalizing a fear of abandonment, which he echoes through Perry Smith. Capote demonstrates an intense emotional attachment with one of the killers, Smith. Throughout the five years in which Capote worked on his project, he thoroughly examined Smith and ultimately befriended him because Smith’s troubled childhood that resembled his own. Capote’s parents, Lillie Mae and Arch, divorced at a young age, leaving Capote in the care of others, and as a result, he spent much of his childhood in Monroeville, Alabama (Truman Capote about the Author). This abandonment by his parents haunted Capote and allowed others to harass him for his effeminate ways. Although he found comfort in his lifelong friend Harper Lee, his relatives and friends in Alabama failed Capote by not providing the love and understanding of a mother and father (Truman Capote Biography). Smith’s youth, although more severe, paralleled Capote’s. In Smith’s childhood, “there was evidence of severe emotional deprivation…This deprivation may have involved prolonged or recurrent absence of one or both parents, a chaotic family life in which the parents were unknown, or an outright rejection of the child by one or both parents with the child being raised by others'" (Capote 191). Smith’s abandonment was due to his mother who “turned out to be a disgraceful drunkard” (Capote 78), and his father who deserted Smith after his separation. Because of his parents’ neglect, orphanages became the primary caretake...
Euthanasia is a serious political, moral and ethics issues in society. People either strictly forbid or firmly favor euthanasia. Terminally ill patients have a fatal disease from which they will never recover, many will never sleep in their own bed again. Many beg health professionals to “pull the plug” or smother them with a pillow so that they do not have to bear the pain of their disease so that they will die faster. Thomas D. Sullivan and James Rachels have very different views on the permissibility of active and passive euthanasia. Sullivan believes that it is impermissible for the doctor, or anyone else to terminate the life of a patient but, that it is permissible in some cases to cease the employment of “extraordinary means” of preserving
There is a vast amount of literature available on the additional procyclicality of regulatory capital charges in Pillar 1 of Basel II. In this section, we shall briefly visit this literature and see if any conclusions can be drawn from this, before proceeding to the conclusion and mitigation of these procyclical effects. The majority of the literature, as expected, focuses primarily on the IRB approach, as this aspect of Basel II has drawn the most criticism from financial practitioners and academics alike. The greater part of this literature has found that there is an overwhelmingly substantial rise in procyclicality of minimum regulatory capital charges originating from the IRB approach. Gordy and Howells found that under the IRB approach, volatility in the capital charge, relative to the mean, is between 0.1 to 0.26 (Gordy & Howells, 2004). This follows another study by Kashyap and Stein, which shows that capital charges rose by 70-90% during the years of 1998 to 2002 dependant of the model used to calculate PD’s (Goodhart & Taylor, 2004).
Gerald Clarke, ed. Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote. New York: Random House,
...ence of Capital Measurement and Capital Standards’, Basle Committee on Banking Supervision, vol.1, no.1, p1-28.