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Euthanasia should be legalized 5 introduction body conclusion
Moral implications of euthanasia
Moral implications of euthanasia
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Is Mercy Killing Really Merciful? The definition of the term “mercy” is giving compassion or forgiveness to someone that doesn’t deserve it. Has anyone ever thought of suicide as a compassionate act? Euthanasia comes from the greek word eu meaning good and thanatos meaning death. Has anyone ever thought of suicide being good? Andrew Coyne says, “A society that believes in nothing can offer no argument even against death. A culture that has lost its faith in life cannot comprehend why it should be endured.” We take life for granted and forget that it is a gift and not something we should just be able to end when it is most convenient for us. While it can be perceived as a way to take away pain and suffering from the ill, euthanasia doesn’t solve the real problem for people and should stay illegal. The definition of euthanasia is having the means to take a deliberate action, with the expressed intention of ending a life, to relive intractable suffering. It can also be called physician assisted suicide, doctor assisted suicide, or mercy killing. A patient is usually given a lethal amount of drugs. There are two main types and two procedural types of euthanasia that help to understand euthanasia more clearly. Voluntary Euthanasia is when the patient gives consent to the action of killing. The other option is Involuntary Euthanasia which is when the killing is done without patient consent. The decision has to be made by another person because the patient is incapable of doing so oneself. The first procedural type is Active Euthanasia. Active is when lethal substances are used to take a patient 's life. The second type is controversial whether it is considered euthanasia. This procedure is called Passive Euthanasia, which is withholdin... ... middle of paper ... ...plan” (ProQuest). Doctors surely go against those words when doing that act of giving or prescribing a person with lethal drugs. How do doctors have the ability to determine the quality of someone else’s life? Does a doctor really know for sure that the person could not get well again (Nordqvist)? According to the National Health System, “it is illegal to kill someone regardless of circumstances” (Nordqvist 1). And now we want to give people the chance to kill themselves when they feel they are ready? Suicide was determined a criminal act from the 1300’s, including assisting others in ending their own life. Why should it be okay now? Why should people have the “choice” now? Does a person in great pain with an incurable disease really have the moral right to end his or her own life? Neither euthanasia nor assisted suicide should become legalized in the United States.
Should people have the right to kill themselves if they’re on the verge of dying? People are allowed to kill themselves in everyday life, so why can’t a person who knows that there is no way he will be able recover from his illness choose to end his life on his own terms? Many people don’t support and agree with assisted suicide. Even though many people don’t believe in physician assisted suicide, there are people suffering when they shouldn’t have too. A person who is terminally ill should have the right to choose to die if they choose.
Euthanasia comes from the Greek word that means “good death” (“Euthanasia” literally). In general, euthanasia refers to causing the death of someone to end their pain and suffering, oftentimes in cases of terminal illness. Some people call these “mercy killings”. There are two types of euthanasia: passive and active. Passive or voluntary euthanasia refers to withholding life-saving treatments or medical technology to prolong life.
Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide has been a hot topic of debate for quite some time now. Some believe it to be immoral, while others see nothing wrong with it what so ever. Regardless what anyone believes, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide should become legal for physicians and patients. Death is a personal situation in life. By government not allowing euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide they are interfering and violating patient’s personal freedom and human rights! Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have the power to save the lives of family members and other ill patients. Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide should become legal however, there should be strict rules and guidelines to follow and carry out by both the patient and physician. If suicide isn’t a crime why should euthanasia and assisted suicide? Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide should be legal and the government should not be permitted to interfere with death.
"If suicide is a right, then it is one that has remained undiscovered throughout the ages by the great thinkers in law, ethics, philosophy and theology. It appears nowhere in the Bible or the Koran or the Talmud. Committing suicide wasn't a "right" a thousand years ago, and it isn't one now. That's why most societies, including our own, have passed laws against it" (Callahan, pg. 71). Assisted suicide is murder!
Jack Kevorkian, a former pathologist said, “ Everyone has a right for suicide, because a person has a right to determine what will or will not be done to his body” (“Should Euthanasia or Physician-Assisted Suicide Be Legal?”). That's true, everybody should be able to determine what happens to their body. Geoffrey N. Fieger, a attorney for Dr. Kevorkian, said, “a law which does not make anybody do anything, that gives people the right to decide, and prevents the state from prosecuting you for exercising your freedom not to suffer, violates somebody else’s constitutional rights is insane” (“The Right to Assisted Suicide). Then Ronald Dworkin, a person that witnessed a woman in pain, ask for assisted suicide, said “whatever view we take about, we want the right to decide for ourselves” (“The Right to Assisted Suicide”). This is showing that people want to be able to make their own decisions with their body. If they or somebody they know wants to make the decision to go with assisted suicide, they want to be able to do that. Therefore assisted suicide should become legal because people want to, and should be able to make their own decisions with their
Imagine yourself laying on your deathbed, hooked up to countless machines. The doctors are constantly coming to check you while you're trying to get what little sleep you can through the agonizing pain. Even more you're suffering from the side effects of countless drugs, constipation, delirium, you can barely breathe and you've lost all your appetite. There no chance of survival and death is imminent, it's just a matter of time when. You just lay there fighting for your last seconds. Now, if you had the chance to choose how your life ended, wouldn't you choose how and when it ends? Hence, doctor assisted suicide should be a legal option for terminally ill patients. This is a humane way for them to end their lives with dignity, without shame and suffering. We don't have the freedom of speech unless we have the freedom to refuse to speak. The same goes for our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, we can't have complete freedom unless we have the freedom to deny these things. We can't claim full control over our life if we cannot choose when to end it. Thus, people should be given the right to assisted suicide in order to end their unnecessary suffering, to preserve the individual right of people to determine their own fate, and to reduce the burden on their families both, financially and emotionally.
Furthermore, people feel that legalizing doctor-assisted suicide will open the floodgates and lead to a slippery slope that will ultimately devalue the worth of human life and lead to doctors pressuring the terminally ill to request assisted suicide. The evidence tells a different story however. One Dutch research article found that those most often requesting suicide were terminal cancer patients (15%) and those who had a terminally progressive neurological disorder (8%) (Onwuteaka-Philipsen et al., 2010). The same article showed that of all the patients these doctors saw, only 7% asked for doctor assisted suicide/euthanasia and around only 2.4% of the patients actually received euthanasia/doctor assisted suicide (Onwuteaka-Philipsen et al., 2010). To be clear, active euthanasia is when a doctor actively does something that will end a patient’s life, like injecting the patient with a lethal dose of poison and passive euthanasia is when the doctor withholds treatment that could potentially save a patient, such as in the case of a do not resuscitate order. Physicians, the study showed are generally very conservative in allowing PAS, as two thirds of those who requested euthanasia/PAS did not receive
Critics to the idea of providing dying patients with lethal doses, fear that people will use this type those and kill others, “lack of supervision over the use of lethal drugs…risk that the drugs might be used for some other purpose”(Young 45). Young explains that another debate that has been going on within this issue is the distinction between killings patients and allowing them die. What people don’t understand is that it is not considered killing a patient if it’s the option they wished for. “If a dying patient requests help with dying because… he is … in intolerable burden, he should be benefited by a physician assisting him to die”(Young 119). Patients who are suffering from diseases that have no cure should be given the option to decide the timing and manner of their own death. Young explains that patients who are unlikely to benefit from the discovery of a cure, or with incurable medical conditions are individuals who should have access to either euthanasia or assisted suicide. Advocates agreeing to this method do understand that choosing death is a very serious matter, which is why it should not be settled in a moment. Therefore, if a patient and physician agree that a life must end and it has been discussed, and agreed, young concludes, “ if a patient asks his physician to end his life, that constitutes a request for
The word “euthanasia” comes from the Ancient Greek “eu” - good and “thanatos” - death. Plato argued that suicide was against the will of the gods, and was therefore wrong. He does say that patients that are unable to live normally should be denied treatment. Aristotle believed that suicide is wrong because the law forbids it. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, was against active euthanasia. In his famous “Hippocratic oath”, a line forbids giving a “deadly drug” [9][11].
Doctors prefer to never have to euthanize a patient. It is a contradiction of everything they have been taught for a doctor to euthanize someone, because a doctor’s job is to do everything in their power to keep the patient alive, not assist them in suicide. The majority of doctors who specialize in palliative care, a field focused on quality of life for patients with severe and terminal illnesses, think legalizing assisted suicide is very unnecessary. This is due to the fact that if patients do not kill themselves, they will end up dying on a ventilator in the hospital under the best possible care available, with people around them trying to keep them as comfortable as possible. Legalized euthanasia everywhere has been compared to going down a slippery slope. Officials believe that it could be done over excessively and the fear of assisted suicide numbers rising greatly is a great fear. This is why euthanasia is such a controversial subject worldwide. But, even though it is a very controversial subject, euthanasia is humane. Every doctor also has a say in whether or not they choose to euthanize a patient or not, leaving only the doctors who are willing to do this type of practice, for euthanizing patients. Medicine and drugs prescribed by a doctor for pain or suffering can not always help a person to the extent they desire, even with the help of doctors
Euthanasia is an action that result in the death of a person. There are four types of euthanasia, such as voluntary active euthanasia, nonvoluntary active euthanasia, voluntary passive euthanasia, and nonvoluntary passive euthanasia. Among the four types of euthanasia, voluntary active euthanasia or VAE is the most controversial ethical issue in the United States. It is the killing of a competent patient who decided to end his/her suffering by ending his/her life with the help of the physician. VAE is illegal in the Unites States; however, it is morally just. Voluntary active euthanasia is legitimately moral on the basis of Immanuel Kant’s human dignity, the utilitarian’s Greatest Happiness Principle, and James Rachel’s view of active euthanasia.
“Euthanasia is defined as a deliberate act undertaken by one person with the intention of ending life of another person to relieve that person's suffering and where the act is the cause of death.”(Gupta, Bhatnagar and Mishra) Some define it as mercy killing. Euthanasia may be voluntary, non voluntary and involuntary. When terminally ill patient consented to end his or her life, it is called voluntary euthanasia. Non voluntary euthanasia occurs when the suffering person never consented nor requested to end a life. These patients are incompetent to decide because they are either minor, in a comatose stage or have mental conditions. Involuntary euthanasia is conducted when it is against the will of the patient (Gupta, Bhatnagar, Mishra). Euthanasia can be either passive or active. Passive euthanasia means life-sustaining treatments are withheld and nothing is done to keep the patient alive. Active euthanasia occurs when a physician do something by giving drugs or substances that ends a patient’s life. (Medical News Today)
The different types of Euthanasia are active or passive euthanasia and voluntary or involuntary euthanasia. Passive Euthanasia generally refers to the ending of a persons life by removing the person from a life-sustaining machine, such as a respirator. This form of euthanasia is endorsed by the American Medical Association and is less controversial than active euthanasia. Active euthanasia refers to ending a persons life by a competent medical authority giving the person a lethal injection of a muscle relaxant or pain killer medication. The terms voluntary or involuntary refer to whether or not a patient requests euthanasia or whether the patient is not able to make such a request and euthanasia is carried out by a competent medical authority at the request of another family member, or by a competent medical authority’s decision. Involuntary euthanasia usually occurs when a patient is comatose.
Moreover, some believe that medical practitioners and other human beings have no right to decide when a person ought to die. On the other hand, the practice is rebuked by many people since it can open grounds for murder, where a doctor or anyone may commit the act and then claim to have practiced passive euthanasia on the victim. Such concerns, as explicated by Rachels, explain why the practice may not be accepted anytime soon among doctors. On the other hand, I totally disagree with the proposition that links euthanasia to killing since passive patient-directed dying is always carried out with proper regulation to avoid malicious or selfish intentions with regard to the issue at hand. I think that doctors have a moral duty to accomplish the wishes of their patients, including end-of-life decisions.
By contrast, I argue that euthanasia is fundamentally wrong because it involves killing. It arbitrarily takes life and denies natural dying process. Therefore, euthanasia violates the belief that human being has intrinsic value until arriving at death. In practical term, we have no right over our death, as over birth itself. Our right for choice is only available between birth and death.