Euthanasia

Euthanasia is a controversial topic that raises many religious, medical and ethical issues. View points for and against Euthanasia have been debated for many years. There are several quality arguments presented by both those for and against the practice. A considerable size of society is in favor of Euthanasia mostly because they feel that as a democratic country, individuals have the right to decide whether to terminate their life or not. "The right to choose to die when terminally or hopelessly ill is to me the ultimate civil and personal liberty. People are not a free people unless they are able die according to, and at the time of, their selection" (Humphry 1). Those who are not in favor have a strongly held opinion against Euthanasia primarily because society feels that it is up to God to determine when the time has come for a person who is of his creation to exit life on earth.

The term Euthanasia comes from the Greek words "eu" meaning good, and "thanatos" meaning death and is defined as the "the intentional termination of life by another at the explicit request of the person who dies."(www.wikipedia.org) This definition includes a very key point. It states that the person to be killed must clearly request their life be ended; therefore they are the one to initiate the idea. Cats and dogs in the USA are being euthanized on a daily basis, some per request of the owner and others because of over population of the animals. Why is it that it seems more acceptable to put a suffering pet to sleep than to do it to a family member? Euthanasia stems out into three different branches, euthanasia is the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit. The first is voluntary euthanasia, which is when the person who is killed has requested to be killed. Involuntary euthanasia is when the person who is killed made an expressed wish to not be killed. Assisted suicide is when someone provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this purpose. When it is a doctor who helps another person to kill themselves it is called "physician assisted suicide."

There is a difference between Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide; with euthanasia a third party has to perform the last act that leads to the patient's death, while assisted suicide requires that the person that dies was the person that committed the last act. Therefore, it would be assisted suicide if a person took an overdose of drugs provided by a doctor in order to cause death. It would also be assisted suicide if the patient pulled a switch that triggered a fatal injection after the doctor has inserted an intravenous needle into the patient's body. (http://www.internationaltaskforce.org/faq.htm)

Ethical Topics

In order to really take sides on euthanasia we have to learn about some ethical ideas that go hand in hand, such as: death, moral relativism, and egoism.

Death can be viewed in different ways; Epicurus agreed that death shouldn't be feared. In fact he states "Death is nothing to us, for that which is dissolved is without sensation; and that which lacks sensation is nothing to us" The stoics also agreed that death shouldn't be feared, one has to compare their state of non-existence before they were born to the state of non-existence after they die and there is nothing at all to fear. Another view of death is that of vanishing time, meaning that death some centuries ago is the same death that people go through now. Often death is looked at as mysterious, offering in some religions an after life, this being a main attraction to religions. Ethics motivates in the same way, life on earth is sometime unjust or intolerable, and there must be another place where this justice is restored or balanced perhaps. Death can be seen in the sense that the person does the dying (process) and only after we die are we no longer living.

Death is not only noticed by people in humans alone, our world is a huge biological machine and we all know that the full cessation of vital functions in a biological organism means death. Children and adults are surrounded by death on an everyday basis, from the minutest details to the most gruesome. Plants, trees, and animals die, therefore we should not fear the death of human beings. (Blackburn 65-67)

Moral Relativism states that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect absolute and universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition's truth. This in return leaves us with the premonition that when rules are left to our own making, there are only the different truths of the different communities. Relativism gets a very bad rap from moral philosophers yet it is also hailed by others because it allows for toleration of different ways of living and dying for that matter. "Relativism taken to its limit becomes subjectivism: not the view that each culture or society has its own truth, but that each individual has his or her own truth." (Blackburn p.27)

Ethical egoism is belief that one ought to do what is in one's own self-interest, although a distinction should be made between what is really in one's self-interest and what is only apparently so. What is in one's self-interest may incidentally be detrimental to others, beneficial to others, or neutral in its effect. Ethical egoism was first propounded in modern times by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan. It operates from the general rule that if any action increases my own good, then it is right. Hobbes argued that we cannot help but act in our own self-interest, and therefore, such actions are ethical (Rosen, B. (1990). Ethics companion. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.).

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