Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide are Murder

Euthanasia is Murder

Euthanasia - is it killing or letting die? In the last thirty years,

this has been a highly controversial topic, the worldly morals versus the

Christian. Although there are certain instances where it is justifiably

considered to be letting die, it is essentially murder.

Euthanasia comes from a Greek word, meaning "easy death," and is now

often associated with the infamous Dr. Kevorkian. There are three types of

euthanasia - what doctors consider to be "letting the patient die," for instance

taking both conscious and unconscious patients off of life support, not reviving

the patient in case of a heart failure, et cetera. There is also assisted

suicide. Dr. Kevorkian and his suicide machine have made themselves known

through this technique. The machine injects a lethal dosage into the "patients"

blood stream, killing then painlessly within ten minutes.

The first type mentioned above is known as "active voluntary

euthanasia." This is where a conscious, mentally competent person, usually with

a severe physical ailment, loses the will to live. Many have said that keeping

them alive is just prolonging their death, a form of cruel and unusual

punishment. They may ask that life support equipment be disconnected so that

they can die quickly, painlessly, with dignity. Most doctors are trained to try

their best to defeat death, or at least try to delay it as long as possible. But

if the patient is hopelessly ill, and would prefer to die, the doctor may

consult the hospital ethics committee, and take him or her off of life support.

When taken to court in these issues, the doctors defend themselves in saying, "I

didn't kill him, I let him die." This is illegal throughout the United States

and the rest of the world, but it still is a common occurrence.

The second type, "passive voluntary euthanasia," is done when a

terminally ill patient's or a patient in a persistent vegetative state's (PVS)

family chooses to take their loved one off of life support. A PVS patient has no

self-awareness or any awareness of their surroundings because the cerebral

cortex, the thinking part of the brain, id dead. The brain stem, the part of the

brain that controls the major organs of the body, still works, though.