Make Your Own Title, (It Won’t Kill You To Do That Much) Essay, Research Paper
The issue of euthanasia is one of heated debate. Euthanasia has been covered extensively by the media in recent years. The United States of America is struggling with the proposal of legislation and possible regulation for the practice of euthanasia. There have been many legal battles fought over the issue in the last decade. However after many decisions, appeals, and overturns, the strongest legal aspect to euthanasia is a Supreme Court ruling that made it legal for states to pass legislation banning euthanasia. While the legal aspect of euthanasia is still up in the air, people are choosing to end their lives through euthanasia. Euthanasia is defined as: the act of painlessly ending the life of a person for reasons of mercy. This assumes that this method is a better death, a more “gentle and easy death” than the alternative (Boss, 1999). However, people should not be able to choose euthanasia as a way out or an alternative for the following reasons: 1) Euthanasia interferes with God s ultimate plan, therefore making it morally wrong. 2) It contradicts the international code of medical ethics. 3) It is against the Hippocratic Oath. 4) It is not a solution for temporary depression or pain. 5) The majority of people considering euthanasia, are not psychologically fit to make that decision. There are two basic types of euthanasia: active and passive. Active euthanasia is when one takes direct measures to cause a patient s death. Whereas passive euthanasia is when one withholds treatment, thus allowing the patient to die. Although some people condone passive euthanasia as morally acceptable (believing it to be a natural way of dying), it is still a form of euthanasia, because death was preventable. The difference between active and passive greatly affects people’s views toward the issue. One cause for controversy and a recent self-established celebrity is physician Dr. Jack Kevorkian of Royal Oak, Michigan. Notorious as the “Doctor of Death”, this enterprising pathologist has been assisting in suicides for over seven years and has euthanized over 28 people (healthAtoZ.com, 2000). The doctor has invented an apparatus that he calls “mercitron” that delivers a lethal yet painless administration of drugs to the patient. This killing of a human by injection of lethal doses or combinations of medicine is referred to as medicide. Kevorkian, like others practicing euthanasia today, claim that their patients must meet a strict criteria for treatment. Such criteria include the terminally ill or intolerable pain or like his first case: Alzheimer’s. Janet Adkins was Dr. Kevorkian’s first medicide. She had been diagnosed with the Alzheimer’s disease at age 54 (Boss, 1999). She started forgetting her family’s names or appointments she had made. She and her husband convinced Kevorkian to help her commit suicide. Where people had problems with this case was the fact that Janet was suffering no pain and was killing herself to avoid the later stages of the diseases. However, there might have been other options for Janet that Kevorkian didn’t care to discuss. Janet, her husband and Dr. Kevorkian interfered with God s plan, by assuming that her disease would progress rapidly and be completely devastating. The major belief in America is that Euthanasia is wrong from a religious aspect. Many Americans, the majority being religious, believe that only God, has the right to control life and that euthanasia is an attempt at playing God. Most religions practiced in America forbid murder in any situation and condemn suicide as well. Therefore, even if someone wants to die no one should have the right to assist or allow him or her to die. Many medical professionals, as well as regular citizens believe that doctors should develop treatments for the physical and psychological problems rather than helping them commit suicide. Other individual problems arise for both the patient and the doctor. Some questions raised might be: Do I want someone to help me? Who will help me? Is this an easy way out? What if this is it? Or will this stay on my conscious if I help? Does this person really need to die? Is this the best option for this patient? Will there be any legal problems? Doctors as well as patients find the issue of euthanasia a tough one to decide. Another issue raised is that of a person’s political right to choose their own choices and live their own lives. Does this then give them the right to end it as well? These and other tough questions will be debated for some time until legislation is passed on the subject. Until then it is unclear whether euthanasia will become more accepted or if it will be abolished and go underground. What is clear is that people will continue to choose it as an answer to their problems and that it will continue to grow. Since the majority of Americans disapprove of euthanasia than that will be the cultural perspective that this paper will focus on. The reason for this unacceptance is mostly due to religious influences. With the belief in a creator comes with it the understanding that since one didn’t play a part in the creation process, then one should not be ready to play a part in its destruction. If God chooses how and when we die than it is sacrilegious to script our own death. Others feel that suicide ends a life prematurely and that the person still had more to accomplish here on earth. The inability of this person to kill himself or herself demonstrates that it might be a reason why it isn’t time for that person to leave us. When a doctor takes it upon himself to shorten the length of someone’s God given life by withdrawing a life-sustaining machine, they are in fact playing God, and are superseding the creator’s plan and allowing individual fears and weakness to interfere with a divine plan.
Voluntary euthanasia may occur when an incurably ill person asks their physician, friend, or relative to put them to death. Many critics of the modern medical profession contend that too often doctors play Gods on operating tables and in recovery rooms. They argue that no doctor should be allowed to judge whether someone should die or not (Rosenblatt, 1997). However, not everyone opposed to euthanasia has religious reasons. There are many in the medical communities that share their views on finding alternatives to euthanasia. For example, traditional medical ethics have never sanctioned euthanasia, even on request for someone with compassionate motives. The International Code of Medical Ethics as originally adapted by the World Medical Association in 1949, in response to the Nazi Holocaust, declares “a doctor must always bear in mind the obligation of preserving human life from conception to death” (Branegan, 1997). This would lead one to believe that doctors are sworn to uphold life regardless of their patient’s wishes. This would seem to correlate with the basic human nature that killing is wrong. The Hippocratic Oath states “I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest such council…” (Eads, 1998). This of course is obvious in that doctors are instructed to avoid death at all costs. This is most likely the reason for the invention of the machines that maintain life even only if on a biological level. The hope is that sometime in the future there may be a cure or better treatment and that anything is a better chance than death. In its 1992 Statement of Marbella, the World Medical Association confirmed that assisted suicide, the active form of euthanasia, is unethical and must be condemned by the medical profession (Boss, 1999). This statement is saying that in societies a doctor who intentionally and deliberately enables an individual to end his or her life is acting unethically. It may cause the patient client relationship to be in jeopardy as other patients start to question their doctors moral integrity and start to be uncertain of his or hers doctor’s motives. It also goes with human nature to survive and to want to live as long as possible for hopes of a cure or better treatments. A lot of people in psychology today feel that some people when in these situations can experience many psychological effects. Severe depression is an obvious effect that would set in when diagnosed with a terminal disease or when one is living everyday with horrendous pain. Also the decision to request euthanasia is rarely one of free choice. People are pressured into the decision by society’s view of them as unproductive and inconvenient. A patient with a terminal illness is very vulnerable. He/she lacks the knowledge and skills to alleviate his/her own symptoms, and may be suffering from fear about the future and anxiety about the effect of his/her illness on others that are close to him/her. This causes the person to loose his/her objectivity in dealing with the situation. Those who work regularly with the terminally ill recognize that they often suffer from depression and a false sense of worthlessness that would obvious affect their decision on whether or not to request euthanasia if it were available. Their decision-making may be equally affected by confusion, paranoia, or troublesome symptoms that could be alleviated or at least relieved with appropriate modern treatment (Branegan, 1997). Patients who upon admission to a hospital demand to be allowed to die and later after effective symptom relief are appreciative that their request was not granted. Terminally ill patients also adapt to a level of disability that they had previously felt was impossible to live with. The patients overtime begin to value the preciousness of life and let go the anger for the circumstances that caused them to end up in this situation. With proper guidance and help they can begin to see hope and opportunity where before they only felt despair. Several people in society are in favor of euthanasia mostly because they feel that as a democratic country, we as free individuals have the right to decide for ourselves, whether or not to end our lives. However, the more dominant and widely held opinions of society are against euthanasia primarily because American society in general feels that it’s God’s task to decide when each of His creations’ time shall come. Most argue that this is also important from a medical viewpoint in that possible cures may be on the horizon and that fact that medical technology is always trying to extend the human life expectancy. The cryogenics field is an example of this phenomenon. It is widely believed that there are only two options open to patients with terminal illness: either they die slowly in unrelieved suffering or they receive euthanasia. In fact, now there is another option. Continuous research in palliative medicine has in recent years shown that virtually all unpleasant symptoms experienced in the process of terminal illness can be either relieved or substantially alleviated by techniques already available (Eads, 1998). Many also doubt the decision-making ability of someone when faced with this type of diagnoses. Psychologists as well feel that most often the people in these situations are not psychological fit to be making decisions about their own death. With cutting-edge science pitted against religious moral upbringings, the battle over euthanasia is far from over.