Claude Noel Yamgueu Prof. Landrus EN102 09/16/2013 Euthanasia Exploratory According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, euthanasia is the act or practice of intentionally ending the life of someone who is very sick or injured in order to prevent any more suffering. The 20th century was a time that saw the development of the modern hospital system, a development that contributed in the emergence of the euthanasia debate. Regardless of whether or not a person is in favor of euthanasia, many people do want a dignified death for themselves and their loved ones. However, the debate encompasses many interesting sides about whether or not humans have the right to die. The three main views of this issue include the pro-euthanasia, the con-euthanasia
What about people with disabilities? Who will decide for them? Medical professionals of course agree that the disabled would be exempt. You have to be of sound mind to even consider euthanasia. Professor Suzanne McDermott of USC School of Medicine, Columbia, SC, stated, there will be many states in the next decade that introduce or consider the introduction of laws to legalize assisted suicide.
The routine practice of physician-assisted suicide raises serious ethical and other concerns (Snyder, 2004). According to ACP-ASIM, legalization of physician assisted suicide would undermine the patient–physician relationship and the trust necessary to sustain it. It would alter the medical profession's role in society and endanger the value our society places on life; especially on the lives of disabled, incompetent, and vulnerable individuals. The Hippocratic Oath is one of the oldest binding documents in history. Its principles are held sacred by doctors, “Treat the sick to the best of one's ability, preserve patient privacy, and teach the secrets of medicine to the next generation” (Hippocratic Oath, n.d.).
The Carter case wants to define it as all people who are suffering and they are trying to grant doctors the right to cause their death. It’s not about choice, it’s about who is gaining the right to do this." 1 That is, his view is that the core issue is whether doctors should be able to legally murder anyone they wish to. Schadenberg's comments indicate precisely why legislation governing physician assisted suicide should include precise limits and controls to prevent abuse. 2011-NOV-14: Demonstration outside the courthouses: Demonstrators with the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (EPCC) gathered in front of the court house.
Assisted suicide caught my eye because when I saw the topic my main thought was a relative or a friend would help bring your life to death. Basically that a friend would help you kill yourself. However never did it occur to me that the help from a “friend” would be a physician prescribing you with lethal medication to speed up the process of one’s death. I was concerned with this area of bioethics because it brought my attention that it is essentially messing around with the idea of dying naturally. Instead of God bringing you to your death, one is giving ones life away, but asking for it in medical terms.
Physician assisted suicide should not be legalized for the simple fact many would give up and take the easy way out. There is currently a pervasive assumption that if assisted suicide and/or voluntary euthanasia (AS/VE) were to legalized, then doctors would take responsibility for making the decision that these interventions were indicated, for prescribing the medication, and (in euthanasia) for administering it .Richard Huxable remarks “that homicide law encompasses various crimes, so prosecutors can choose charges to suit the circumstances. Yet one thing is clear: mercy killing is still killing, equally, murder is murder” Physician assisted suicide is nothing more than cold blooded
Physician-assisted suicide is the voluntary termination of a person’s life by administration of a lethal substance with the direct or indirect assistance of a physician. Physician-assisted suicide is the practice of providing a patient with a prescription for medication for the patient to use with the primary intention of ending his or her own life. For decades it has been an on going debate whether or not this practice is right legally, morally, and religiously. Does a person have the right to end his or her own life? This will be the topic addressed in this paper.
Assess this argument: ‘Killing is wrong if and only if it deprives a person of a valuable future life; some terminally ill people do not have a valuable future life; so it is not wrong to kill them’. Voluntary euthanasia is the ending of human life and intentionally relieving pain that a patient is suffering due to a terminal illness such as cancer. By definition, diseases such as cancer, cannot be cured or sufficiently treated and are expected to result in the death of the patient within the near future. As they no longer see the remaining months left of their life valuable, ending their life now seems a rational request. Killing is a form of active euthanasia whereby a person is deliberately causing death of a patient.
The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 (Pub.L. 108–105, 117 Stat. 1201, enacted November 5, 2003, 18 U.S.C. § 1531, PBA Ban) is a United States law prohibiting a form of late-term abortion that the Act calls "partial-birth abortion", referred to in medical literature as intact dilation and extraction. Under this law, any physician who, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, knowingly performs a partial-birth abortion and thereby kills a human fetus shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 2 years, or both.
I suggest that euthanasia will be the next step. If the elderly don’t step aside by euthanizing themselves, society will begin setting them aside. Today’s “Every Child a Wanted Child” will become tomorrow’s “Every Grandparent a Wanted Grandparent.” Former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop publicly stated his fear that mandatory euthanasia would eventually result from the unwillingness of the younger generation to support the elderly. Here’s the kicker: Even if overpopulation was a problem, it would still be a bad argument for abortion! Since when did it become a morally acceptable policy to solve social problems by killing millions of people?