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Euthanasia Essay, Research Paper

Euthanasia

Euthanasia: killing the dying. It?s OK – isn?t it?

What is euthanasia?

Euthanasia is the intentional killing of a person, for compassionate motives, whether the killing is by a direct action, such as a lethal injection, or by failing to perform an action necessary to maintain life euthanasia to occur, there must be an intention to kill.

What practices would be involved?

The most common suggestion is for voluntary (or “active”) euthanasia, where the person asks to be killed. Although those who advocate euthanasia do not like the use of the word “kill”, it is the only accurate, non-emotional word to describe the reality, and it is the word which the law uses. Assisted suicide is also now being proposed, where a person would be provided with the means of committing suicide, and would

then himself or herself perform the act Less commonly discussed is involuntary euthanasia. This concerns the killing of persons who cannot express their wishes because of immaturity (such as a new- born infant), mental retardation or coma. Here others decide that that person would be better off dead. By current law, all forms of ethane what is so-called passive euthanasia?

This term causes unnecessary confusion because it refers to actions, which are not any kind of euthanasia. They are: (a) the ceasing of medical treatment which is unwanted, or is imposing excessive burdens on the patient, or is incapable of providing any

Benefit, or (b) the use of drugs in necessarily large doses to relieve very severe pain, though such doses may endanger life. Medical actions intended to relieve suffering are ethical and lawful, as are the withdrawal of treatments, which are only unnecessarily prolonging dying. Though the patient may later die of his terminal illness and though such death was foreseen, death was neither intended nor caused by what was done. To describe these practices as euthanasia is misguided when it is mistaken or mischievous when it is used deliberately to confuse active killing with good medical practice.

Is this an important distinction?

It is extremely important to understand the difference between killing and letting die, when the person has expressed a preference to die, but it is a difficult concept for some, and can give rise to confusion. Asia are murder and assisting suicide is a criminal offence. When life-sustaining treatment is withdrawn for the reasons listed earlier, where the intention is to relieve suffering, the natural course of the underlying illness, which had been temporarily stayed, is thus allowed to run. If the diagnosis is correct, death will then result from this illness which was always going to be the eventual unavoidable cause, and this cause is recorded on the death

certificate. Until death occurs, every means of providing comfort must be maintained.

Euthanasia is different in its nature and its intention. Death is now the sole intended and the sole possible outcome, and is not due to any natural cause, even in those with terminal illness. It is chemically induced so that a new and otherwise impossible cause of death has been substituted for the one which was to be expected. From both the ethical and legal viewpoints, making a person die is different from letting a person die when it is medically proper to do so. If the death certificate is honestly completed, it will tell the story. Even the nature of the person’s request is different; one risk death, and the other seeks it. Prescribing for death would be unlike any other medical action.

For whom is euthanasia proposed?

Euthanasia has usually been proposed only for those with terminal illness with severe suffering, but more recently the concept has been extended to include persons who wish to die for some relatively trivial social reason, such as being tired of life.

The challenge of euthanasia is moral: “Can it ever be right to kill an innocent person?” In the light of what follows, the question

becomes, more starkly, “Can it be right to kill such persons unnecessarily?” Is there a real need for euthanasia? Those who care full-time for the dying rarely encounter a request to be killed, and when they do, it is almost always associated with depression or an intractable social problem. The advocates of euthanasia give the impression that there is a geat need for it, but they never provide any evidence to support this view. The reasonable conclusion is that when dying persons are well cared for, they have no need to ask to be killed. In that case, to introduce euthanasia would be doubly tragic, because it would be both inhumane and unnecessary.

Why is euthanasia proposed?

Because it is not widely known that modern care of the dying, called palliative care, can now effectively relieve almost all severe pain and significantly relieve emotional distress. Both those who wish to relieve distress by appropriate care and those who propose killing through ignorance are motivated by compassion. But there are enormous differences in the two approaches, involving morality, medicine, the law and the good of society. Euthanasia is said to be an expression of such things as death with dignity, the right to die, autonomy and so on. For the most part,

these are used as slogans, without understanding their true meanings. Dying persons are treated with true dignity when their genuine needs are met by providing effective, loving care which values the worth of every fellow human, in distress or not. Although a right to die is claimed, what is meant instead is a right to be killed. There has never been a right to be killed in any code of ethics. It is a spurious concept, and no argument is ever made to support it. The right to respect for one’s autonomy

(self-determination) is different, in

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