Euthanasia Essay - Assisted Suicide as an Unethical Option

Euthanasia as an Unethical Option

Should a question of right and wrong be compromised for a question of convenience? "When I regained consciousness 3 days later, I was in Portland Hospital paralyzed (at first) from the neck down. I also had a severe concussion, collapsed left lung and crushed left collarbone. A pair of metal tongs had been drilled in my skull and attached to weights to stabilize my neck and I was on a slab of bed that turned me from back to front every 4 hours....After I surprised the doctors and lived to get into rehab, they told me, at that time, the average lifespan of a male quadriplegic was 36 years... I am now 45 now and could look back on that laughingly... During that period there were MANY times when I didn't know if I wanted to go on" (How Physician...). This is the story of a quadriplegic man who has been paralyzed from the chest down for over 24 years from an extreme car accident in 1975. His life seemed unbearable. These hopeless thoughts made him consider physician assisted suicide or euthanasia as the easy way out of a tragic situation. Although the doctors had confirmed that he would shortly pass away, he kept fighting and is still alive now, living as a successful journalist. He is incredibly grateful that physician assisted suicide or euthanasia was not an option at that time. This case and many others show how euthanasia or assisted suicide is a bad idea.

Euthanasia is the act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment. But euthanasia cannot be just rolled up into one definition. There are many different ways and instances in which euthanasia can be preformed. There is passive euthanasia and active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia is withdrawing medical treatment from a patient with the intention of a patient's death. For example, if a patient needs some kind of respirator or machine to survive, and a doctor disconnects that machine, the patient will probably die soon. Another example of passive euthanasia is the "do not resuscitate order." Basically, in passive euthanasia nothing is done to preserve a patient's life. Active euthanasia is when precise steps are taken to cause a patient's death, such as a doctor giving a patient a lethal injection or suffocating them with a plastic bag.