Euthanasia: has it gone too far ahead?
So
what exactly is voluntary euthanasia and what are its different
forms? Voluntary euthanasia refers to the
killing of a person who has requested to be killed. It takes three
forms: passive voluntary
euthanasia, assisted suicide, and active voluntary
euthanasia. Passive voluntary
euthanasia is when the suffering
person willingly
stops receiving necessary care such as medicines, food, water, etc in
order to cause his/her death. Assisted
suicide is when the suffering person
willingly commits a suicide using the information or the means
provided to him/her by someone with the intention of helping the
person to die (such as swallowing lethal
tablets given by the doctor). Active
voluntary euthanasia
is when someone, on the suffering person's
consent, explicitly performs an action that brings about the death of
the suffering person (such
as administering a lethal injection).
Passive
voluntary euthanasia is legal throughout the United States of
America. When
it is not possible for the suffering person to give consent, passive
voluntary euthanasia can be induced by the consent of the legal
surrogate of the suffering person. However,
it is disturbing to know that assisted suicide has been legalized in
the states of Oregon, Washington and Montana. Even more disturbing is
the fact that active voluntary euthanasia has been legalized in the
countries of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
The
reason I believe passive voluntary euthanasia is justified is because
the suffering person is merely choosing what happens to him/her, and
I believe that we all should have this freedom. However,
legalizing assisted suicide or active voluntary euthanasia is
essentially making terminally ill people 'vulnerable' to doctors.
Some people
might argue that these two forms of euthanasia are still voluntary
and would happen only after the consent of the suffering person, but
what they fail to realize is that this consent will be far from
'informed.' For
an eighty year old terminally ill woman who can't even read and
understand the morning newspaper, how
do we expect her to understand the probabilities of all future
improvements that might be possible in her health and then make a
proper, calculated choice? Not
every common man has the knowledge of medicine, and that makes
him/her extremely vulnerable to doctors who might mis-advise them in
order to reduce the financial risk of providing health care for
terminally ill patients.
People
who support these two forms of voluntary euthanasia see things as
black and white, but that is hardly ever the case. Legalizing
assisted suicide or active voluntary euthanasia will cause a slippery
slope that will lead to suffering persons being psychologically and
emotionally manipulated into making choices that might not be best
for them.
Sources:
http://www.euthanasia.com/index.html
http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=qwgjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=jc4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=4910,299074&dq=karen-ann-quinlan&hl=en
http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/new-book-reveals-the-shocking-truth-about-euthanasia-and-assisted-suicide-i/
2 comments:
I found this article very interesting, and I think that it is worth making the case for the legalization of voluntary active euthanasia. I am going to limit the discussion to voluntary euthanasia (non-voluntary euthanasia, when a patient is not able to give any type of consent, is a different matter).
You argue that legalizing assisted suicide or active euthanasia would make people vulnerable and prone to taking the doctor’s advice even when it is not in their best interest. However, this idea that doctors have an overwhelming influence over people’s decisions can be applied to any case, not only euthanasia. Doctors advise patients to take drugs, undergo surgeries, and follow treatments, and patients are held responsible for taking that information into account and making informed decisions about their own well-being. When someone is no longer able to choose for him or herself (in the case of mental illness or senescence for example), a legal surrogate is appointed to do so for them, with their best interest at heart. Why should the principle be any different in the case of euthanasia? Why should someone not be allowed to decide when or how to end their life?
I also believe that there is no moral difference between voluntary passive and active euthanasia. In the case of passive euthanasia, the person has given their consent to end their life, so the doctor stops any form of medical treatment and lets them die. In the case of active euthanasia, the person has also expressed their desire to end their life, but instead of having to wait while their body shuts down naturally, which can often be a long and painful process, they can minimize their suffering by asking for anesthesia and a lethal injection, for example. Why is this ethically wrong while the former is ethically permissible?
In my opinion, voluntary active euthanasia should be legalized, as it can be in the patient's best interest.
Euthanasia is a highly controversial topic and one that should definitely be treated with caution. Parth closed his post with the statement that the difference between the two forms of voluntary euthanasia is not black and white. I believe that the distinction between active and passive euthanasia, voluntary or not, also has the same ambiguity; this line is far more blurry than it seems at first glance.
Active euthanasia, as noted before, is when someone deliberately does something that causes the patient to die. Passive euthanasia occurs when the patient dies because medical professionals either fail to do something necessary to keep the patient alive or withhold something that is keeping the patient alive. Many think of this distinction as the difference between killing and letting die.
One objection to this clear-cut distinction involves looking at two stories in which all the variables are held constant except for the variable of killing or letting die. This situation comes from James Rachels who tells the story of Smith who will inherit a fortune if his six-year-old cousin dies. And so, one evening, Smith sneaks up to the bathroom where his cousin is taking a bath and he drowns him. The parallel story of Jones is exactly the same as Smith's, except as he enters the bathroom, Jones sees the boy slip and watches him drown himself. In this example, one can see that both men seem equally culpable despite one's action and the other's lack of action. The fact that all other variables are held constant further reinforces this judgment.
After all, isn't the act of letting die also a deliberate action? For example, switching off the respirator requires someone to carry out the action of switching the machine off. If the patient dies as a result of this action, while it is true that the patient ultimately dies of his/her disease, it is also true that the immediate action that ends his/her life is the switching off of the machine. While passive euthanasia, in one perspective, may be seen as not doing something, it also intrinsically involves the commission of an action, like turning off life support.
As such, I believe that there is no distinction between passive and active euthanasia. The difference, if one exists, cannot rest in the action or the absence of action. Whether they are morally permissible or not still needs to be discussed, but I believe that if one is permissible, the other must be, and vice versa.
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