is the practice of terminating the life of a person or animal in a painless or minimally painful way in order to stop suffering or other undesired conditions in life. This may be voluntary or involuntary, and carried out with or without a physician. In a medical environment, this can be carried out by oral, intravenous or intramuscular drug administration.
Reasons given for Voluntary Euthanasia:
* Choice: Choice is a fundamental democratic principle and is the basis of the Free Enterprise system.
* Financial: It is a burden to keep people alive past the point they can contribute to society.
* Pain: The pain and suffering a person feels during a disease can be incomprehensible, even with pain relievers, to a person who has not gone through it. Society should not be able to force them to endure such hardship.
Reasons given against Voluntary Euthanasia:
* Hippocratic Oath: Every doctor must swear upon some variation of it, and the original version explicitly excludes euthanasia.
* Moral: Some people consider euthanasia of some or all types to be morally unacceptable. [1] This view usually treats euthanasia to be a type of murder and voluntary euthanasia as a type of suicide, the morality of which is the subject of active debate.
* Theological: Many religions and modern religious interpretations explicitly regard both euthanasia and suicide as sinful acts (see Religious views of suicide).
* Competence: Euthanasia can only be considered "voluntary" if a patient is mentally competent to make the decision, i.e., has a rational understanding of options and consequences. Competence can be difficult to determine or even define.
* Necessity: If there is some reason to believe the cause of a patient's illness or suffering is or will soon be curable or palliable, the correct action is to attempt to bring about a cure or engage in palliative care.
Pro-Choice
make it legal for a competent adult, who is suffering unbearably from a terminal illness, to be allowed to request medical help to die at their own informed and persistent request - If that's what they want.
Everyone wants a good death, which is why opinion polls show 85% of the population support us.
The doctor/patient relationship has changed a lot over the last 50 years, from 'doctor knows best' towards a more equal relationship with doctors giving patients the information they need in order to make their own informed decisions. But when it comes to end-of-life decision making the relationship is far from equal: patients are still disempowered.
This requires a two-way dialogue with our doctors, where our wishes about our own lives are respected.
The desire to have control over our lives is a fundamental part of our humanity.
Everyone knows that doctors help people to die even though it is against the law. For example, in a recent survey 4% of UK doctors admitted to assisting in a patient's suicide, although the real figure is likely to be much higher.
Each year 'mercy killing' cases are brought to court but juries refuse to convict, or when they do judges only give suspended sentences. Without legal safeguards there is little protection here for vulnerable people.
Belgium, conducted a full enquiry into end-of-life decisions, discovered it had five times the amount of non-voluntary euthanasia as the Netherlands, where assisted dying is strictly regulated. The Belgian Senate has now voted to legalise voluntary euthanasia because it recognises regulation is the best way to protect the vulnerable.
Pro-Life
Promoters of these practices take a utilitarian view of human life rather than viewing all human life as uniquely created and deserving of absolute respect.
Dr Christopher Hufeland, Goethe's doctor, warned in 1806 "The physician should and may do nothing else but preserve life. "Whether it is valuable or not, that is none of his business. If he once permits such considerations to influence his actions, the doctor will become the most dangerous man in the state."
The legalising of intentional killing is the catalyst for the wholesale destruction of the elderly - we have seen the torrent of death in Holland where the elderly are terrified of entering hospital for fear of involuntary euthanasia.
No comments:
Post a Comment