Euthanasia
Introduction
The advancements in medicine have made it possible for medical practitioners to provide patients with the best possible care even in the face of a terminal illness. The available medical technologies have ensured that the life-spans of patients are pronged and that pain is managed. However, the improvement of medical care notwithstanding, there has been an increasing trend for doctors to curry out Euthanasia on patients who are terminally ill or who are not able to bear the pain. The issue of Euthanasia has raised many questions relating to morals and the codes of conducts of doctors. It has been argued that Euthanasia undermines the disposition required of doctors in their practice. Doctors and the medicine fraternity in general, flourish on the grounds that they have gained the trust and confidence of their clients to be able to care and cater for their needs (Degnin, 2007). Unless the clients are confident with their doctors, they cannot trust them. It is out of this trust that many people have sought and received reconstructive surgeries, for example, based on the belief and the trust that doctors are able to make them look more attractive. In the same line, in the belief that doctors can be trusted with people’s lives, comes the idea of Euthanasia. Netherlands was the first country to legalize Euthanasia. However, the government set various standards for Euthanasia in order to ensure that only those people who met the set criteria are allowed Euthanasia. One criterion that was set in the Netherlands was that Euthanasia must be voluntary and must be carried out by a qualified doctor (McCullough, 2007).However, the legalization of Euthanasia, particularly in the Netherlands, has been cited as encouraging involuntary Euthanasia
The spread f involuntary Euthanasia has led to various arguments regarding the legalization of Euthanasia. Many people have argued that the idea of Euthanasia contradicts the philosophy of medicine that requires medical professional to cure their patients rather than kill them (McCullough, 2007). It also contradicts moral concerns of various cultures and different religions. Because of the various concerns of ethics and codes of conducts, many people have questioned the legitimacy of the concept of Euthanasia. This Research paper provides an insight on Euthanasia by providing a deeper analysis of the various issues bordering on it.
Definition of Euthanasia
According to the New Oxford Dictionary of English, Euthanasia is defined as the “painless killing of patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma” (Lacewing, n.d). Euthanasia comes from two Greek words “Eu” meaning “good” and “Thanatos” meaning death “death” (Lacewing, n.d). Taken literally, Euthanasia is good death. However, how to distinguish between good and bad death has been an age-old dilemma. Many people have asserted that good death is when living is worse than dying (Lacewing, n.d). Some of the examples in life when living would be considered to be worse than dying are irreversible coma and painful yet terminal illness.
Six types of Euthanasia can be distinguished. The most criticized for of Euthanasia is the Involuntary Euthanasia. This type of Euthanasia occurs when the patient has not expressed the willingness to die. Involuntary Euthanasia is mostly carried out by immediate family members of the patient who may feel that the life of the neither patient of nor worthwhile to live. The second type of Euthanasia is nonvoluntary Euthanasia which occurs when the patient is not able to express their choice to die. Examples of nonvoluntary Euthanasia include Euthanasia on young children or mentally impaired individuals. In recent times, this form of Euthanasia has been referred to as assisted suicide. The thirds type of Euthanasia is the voluntary Euthanasia in which the patient has expressed the desire to die. These three types of Euthanasia can either be active or passive. Passive Euthanasia occurs when the patients is allowed to die from their conditions by withholding treatment. Active Euthanasia occurs when the patient is killed, for example by using lethal injections.
History of Euthanasia
In the medieval times, Christianity impacted on the people to an extent that that people focused more on eternal happiness and immortality of the soul than the physical body (Fenigsen, 2010). As such, people who were considered to suffering from incurable diseases were taken through Euthanasia lest they should turn back on their God and forfeit eternal happiness. Patients would be given sleeping pills before being killed. It was not until the 19th century that things begin to change. The advancements in the field of medicine provide cure for certain deceases that were previously considered incurable. Further, the developments in medicine, particular the development of strong pain killers, made it possible for patients suffering from painful conditions to live comfortable lives.
Morality of Euthanasia
The controversy surrounding Euthanasia has more to do with ethics. It has been a contentious issue whether the terminally ill persons should be taken through Euthanasia even when they wish to do so. Opponents of Euthanasia argue that it is akin to killing as it puts the persons in a drugged state (Quaghebeur et al., 2009). Ideally, the fundamental reason why death is undesirable is that every individual has a right to live. It is based on this rational that murder is considered unethical because it denies the victim the right to life (Lulmasy, et al., 1998). Therefore, the opposition to Euthanasia is based on the fact that Euthanasia, voluntary or otherwise, and murders end up in death and deny the victims the right to live (Lulmasy, et al., 1998).
The dormant argument against Euthanasia is the realization that it can be easily abused. Patients and doctors can easily pressurize patients to agreeing to Euthanasia just because they don’t want to look after them or because of the expenses involved in caring for them (Fernandes, 2010). There is also the need to differentiate between the moral permissibility of voluntary Euthanasia and whether it should be legalized. Based on the utilitarian approach, Euthanasia should be considered based on the differences between the cases. That is, the types of Euthanasia are only different if they have different consequences (Lacewing, n.d). The utilitarian approach is thus concerned with whether Euthanasia results into less suffering (happiness) or whether it increases the suffering. Based on this approach, voluntary Euthanasia is different from involuntary Euthanasia since the person involved has expressed the desire to die (and will be happy to die). It is still right if the live of the person will contain less happiness than unhappiness. However, it is difficult to make this claim if the person wants to remain alive. Most people agree, that because it is crucial for people to make decisions about things that affect them, involuntary Euthanasia always turns out to be wrong. On the other hand, Voluntary Euthanasia is only right when it maximizes the happiness. However, the question is whose happiness should be conceived.
Euthanasia is therefore more of an ethical issue than an issue of logic. The basic human worth and dignity which has been reorganized for protecting the rights of humans must be attached to our humanity (Lacewing, n.d). However, the basic human worth and dignity would not be a just treatment title if humans are deemed to lose them. Even when it is voluntary or otherwise, Euthanasia involves the denial of the value of life for the people who have been reckoned to be good candidates for Euthanasia (Fernandez, 2010). It is, therefore, a type of killing which any ethically sound society should not accommodate.
Legalizing Euthanasia
Very few countries in the world have legalized voluntary Euthanasia. Euthanasia is illegal for the simple reason that it denies individuals their rights to live. This is true for people who expressed their desire to die and those who are aided to commit die. To assert that the life of a person has no value may amount to denying the worth or value of that person, because a person’s reality is not something that can be taken away from the ongoing life of an individual (Humphry, 2005).
People who call for Euthanasia are motivated by the notion that their lives is not worth living. And since a just system prosecutes and punishes people who attempt suicide, the same law also rejects any reason behind any need to curry out Euthanasia. The justice systems in most parts of the world refuse to accommodate any behaviors that endorse the option of the suicide because the claim that the lives of some people are not worthy to live is unjustifiable. Besides, the people who commit suicide on their own, individuals who help other people commit suicide do so in the notions that such people no longer have worthwhile lives. This behavior cannot be sufficiently explained if the people carrying out Euthanasia claim that they were acting out of “compassion” or “friendship” (Boer, 2007). In reality how can the action of an individual assisting someone to die be described as compassion or friendship is they are not convinced that the individual intending commit suicide would be better off not alive?
It would be contradictory for any legal system that purports to enforce social order and protect citizens to legalize murders which rest on the belief that certain lives are worthless. This is particularly wrong because any legal system should have a non-discriminatory and non-arbitrary method of identifying individuals who are subjected to justice. Perhaps the best way of avoiding discrimination in identifying justice subjects is by assuming that all human beings, critically sick or otherwise, are entitled to just treatments and are subjects of the laid down human rights. Put differently, the basic human worth and dignity which has been reorganized for protecting the rights of humans must be attached to our humanity (Seale, 2009).
However, many people have had issues with laws criminalizing Euthanasia, especially when it comes to the situation of people with incurable diseases, or terminally ill patients. The main point of arguments has been the fact that the government has remained adamant on this law, while fully aware that may people are making death trips to countries such as the Netherlands to be assisted in dying. This, according to many people, is a bad law since it ignores the reality on the ground.
Active and passive Euthanasia
Justice and virtue requires that the lives of individual should be preserved. Justice demands that people, their rights and choices be respected. Duties of charity and virtue require that people should not be left to die (Lacewing, n.d). There are some instances where letting an individual to die will be tantamount to killing them. An example of such a situation is where an individual ignores the duty to provide medicine to a patient until the patient dies. In this case, a doctor who refuses to give drugs to a patient would be considered to be guilty of murder. This is true because in such a case, charity and duty requires the same thing and there will be no difference between letting someone die and killing.
Killing is prohibited by the law because it violates the choices of the individuals to continue living. In the case of voluntary Euthanasia, however, respecting the wishes of the patients means killing them. Many deontologists believe that all human being have the duty not to kill, even when requested to do so. Deontology asserts that human life is sacred and should be respected and should be respected even when the individuals themselves have expressed the willingness to die. In this regard, deontologists can only allow passive Euthanasia and not active Euthanasia. Most doctors believe that administering lethal injections contradicts their duty in the practice of medicine. However, what most doctors fall to realize is that they have a duty to ensure that the lives of the patients are protected, including ensuring that their patients are relieved from pain. One way of respecting both duties, is for the doctors to sure that the patients die without feeling a lot of pain. Giving large dosages of painkillers to the patient, even when the painkiller causes the death of the patient, will be permissible because the aim of the doctor will be to relieve pain and not to kill the patient. The intention to kill is considered to be wrong because it goes against the duty not to kill.
Conclusion
Assisting individuals who call to be assisted to die on the belief that they cannot bear their lives, or that they cannot heal from their diseases undermine the need to establish truly compassionate methods of taking care for the dying. Sincere expression compassion is a care system that is motivated by a strong sense of affection and sympathy to the people who are suffering. But clearly, no sensible person can care to individuals who are suffering by killing them. It may also be important to note that main context of the contemporary debate about Euthanasia has been the drive to reduce the costs of health care. But one of the most conspicuous dangers of legalizing Euthanasia is that, before long, Euthanasia would be seen as a better solution to patients who require heavy medical care. If this were to be the case, then the profession of medicine would be robed of the desire to provide genuine solutions to the problems presented by different patients and the ethics involved in the field of medicine will be a thing of the past.
Annotated Bibliography
Boer, T. A. (2007). Recurring themes in the debate about euthanasia and assisted suicide. Journal of Religious Ethics, 35(3), 529-555. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9795.2007.00318.x
The article focuses on significant issues that is based on euthanasia and assisted suicide. There is a common concern that the legalization will bring down the respect that is accorded to the holiness and sacredness of life. Additionally, the report of the House of Lords Select Committee on the assisted death for those that are terminally unwell bill is assesses. Moreover, Dutch records are assesses with recommend for more liberalization of their euthanasia aspect to involve infants and the elderly.
Degnin, F. (1997). Levinas and the Hippocratic Oath: A discussion of physician-assisted suicide. Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, 22(2), 99-123.
This article attempts to focus on the physician-assisted suicide. A number of physicians have based their debate both for and against this act with regard to the contemporary cultural and ethical sources. With the evasion of temptation to ease the stand to immorality there results a complicated situation. Physicians here argue of the education behind this practice. The essay makes effort to rephrase the aspect of human morality as a source and fracturing the human rationality as well as morality.
Fenigsen, R. (2010). Other People’s Lives: Reflections on Medicine, Ethics, and Euthanasia. In, Issues in Law & Medicine (pp. 33-76). Issues in Law & Medicine.
This book is based on the changes of local medicine to the modern scientific aspects and the patients and health professions trends. It similarly is based on the losses. The ethical expert implications of the modern trends being on the increase, the healing ability of the medicine is on the rise though the health professionals are suffering. The local ethics is being confronted.
Fernandez, A. K. (2010). Suffering in the context of euthanasia and assisted suicide: transcending job through Wojtyla’s anthropology. Christian Bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies In Medical Morality, 16(3), 257-273. doi:10.1093/cb/cbq023
This article focuses on the argument of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide which goes on to evade the philosophical anthropology that some claims are based. There are some anthropological that justifies EPAS; the debate for the evil agony. The debate is vital. Wojtyla is against the secular bioethics aspect of meaningless agony and applies it to the Christian sense.
Humphrey, D. (2005). Tread carefully when you help to die. Retrieved from http://www.assistedsuicide.org/suicide_laws.html
This article is based on the aspect of keen creation and application of policies that are meant to help a patient to die. This is since a number of people are of the thought that suicide is not at all a crime. This has however gone on the wrong side of the law as the article discusses.
Lacewing, M. (n.d). Euthanasia. Routledge: Taylor & Francis.
This article focuses on Euthanasia as being a practice of willingly terminating the life of a person so as to relieve the person from the suffering that he or she is undergoing. This practice is grouped variedly as discussed on the book.
Lulmasy, D. et al (1998). Physician resource use and willingness to participate in assisted suicide. Archives of Internal Medicine, 158(9), 974-978.
A number of general internists and more so the minority physicians are not that willing to get involved in PAS, considering the aspects of their trends do not have an implication on PAS, they that go on with it are more so likely to offer a bad prescription when called upon.
McCullough, L. B. (2007). Towards a professional ethics model of clinical ethics. Journal of Medicine & Philosophy, 32(1), 1-6. doi:10.1080/03605310601152198
This book is based on the changes that take place from the local trends in medicine to the modern trends which are the scientific aspects of medicine. It similarly looks into the negative aspects of the modern trends where the doctors are not in good shape due to the practice that is not balanced.
Quaghebeur, T., de Casterlé, B., & Gastmans, C. (2009). Nursing and euthanasia: a review of argument-based ethics literature. Nursing Ethics, 16(4), 466-486.
The article offers a look into the nursing aspects with regard to ethics debate on euthanasia as well as nurses participation in euthanasia precisely. The look into this debate will make it possible for nurses to become part in the euthanasia argument.
Seale, C. C. (2009). Legalization of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide: survey of doctors’ attitudes. Palliative Medicine, 23(3), 205-212.
This is a study report of UK health professionals opinions with regard to the leaglisation of medically help suicide; euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in comparison to the UK public. It involves survey where a rigid belief is related to the decline of support to assisted suicide. A number of the health professional are in support of the practice. It is targeted that coming arguments about the legalization of the practice will take this evidence in place.
