Moral and Ethical Problems of Euthanasia free essay sample

In the USA, the drama that was watched by many countries came to an end. On March 31, in a hospice in the state of Florida, Terri Schiavo died. She was in a coma for 15 years, because of an irreversible defect of the brain. Her husband said Terri did not want to live in a helpless condition, and through courts he achieved that the patient be disconnected from a life-support system (Wikipidia). PINELLAS PARK, Fla. With her husband and parents feuding to the bitter end and beyond, Terri Schiavo died Thursday, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed in a wrenching right-to-die dispute that engulfed the courts, Capitol Hill and the White House and divided the country. Cradled by her husband, Schiavo, 41, died a calm, peaceful and gentle death at about 9 a. m. , a stuffed animal under her arm, flowers arranged around her hospice room, said George Felos, Michael Schiavos attorney (Chachere). Before thinking about questions concerning euthanasia, I would like to say some words about general problems in medicine, from the moment it started, till now days of technical progress, undoubtedly, captured medicine. The basic task of medicine is a treatment of the patient and easing his/her suffering. During the hundreds of years till now, millions of physicians from different nationalities and creeds engaged in these noble actions. Graduating from medical schools, they all give a Hippocratic Oath and follow it in their work. There are a lot of sick people, and there are a lot of diseases. Among those diseases, there are absolutely easy, or very acute, and sometimes incurable deceases. But the medical science developing from year to year achieves enormous successes, and what seemed inconceivable yesterday becomes real today. Recently, many forms of oncological diseases were considered cureless, but now people who are suffering from those diseases are free from them, because of achievements of medicine and pharmacology. The problem of euthanasia has arisen not today and not suddenly. The chronology begins in extreme antiquity, and already then it caused numerous disputes among physicians, lawyers, philosophers and so on. The attitude to deliberately accelerate the approach of death, even with the purpose of the termination of the patient’s suffering, never was unequivocal. â€Å"Francis Bacon (1561~1626) who was an English philosopher said, A doctor has two duties consisting of restoring a patients health and reducing a patients suffering, and used the term euthanasia (from greek euthanasia, eu it is good, thanatos death). This term means a beautiful, favorable and peaceful death, so it sounds soft and gentle† (Kudo). Though the idea of euthanasia has been long debated, since of Hippocrates’ time and till now traditional medical ethics include an interdiction: I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect(Hippocratic Oath). However, since recent time, doctors in increasing frequency have a readiness to resort to this practice, at least when the patient himself/herself asks for death. How should we react to this tendency? Is it a clearing of out-of-date interdictions or it is a certain permissiveness, which is simultaneously incorrect from the moral point of view and is dangerous in practice? It is necessary to say that the term euthanasia complicates unequivocal interpretation and it causes a terminological mess. Approach to the problem of euthanasia changes with changing definitions of the term. â€Å"There are various kinds of euthanasia, such as active and passive euthanasia. There can be euthanasia in cases where we are certain the person does not want to die (involuntary euthanasia) and in cases where we are certain he does want to die (voluntary euthanasia). There can also be euthanasia where here is a doubt whether the person wishes to die or not (nonvoluntary euthanasia)† (Russel 278) Passive euthanasia is expressed when the medical aid directed on life prolongation is stopped, accelerating the approach of natural death (a good example of it could be the Terri Schavo case). Active euthanasia means using any medicinal or other means or other actions to cause painless death. â€Å"It [Euthanasia] is considered active if death is deliberately caused through such direct means as administering a lethal injection. It is considered passive if death is deliberately hastened by the omission of actions that might have prolonged life, such as performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation when cardiac arrest occurs, or administering antibiotics to combat acute infection†(Warren186). Active euthanasia can be in the following forms: 1. Euthanasia committed out of mercy occurs when relatives or the doctor, seeing painful sufferings of a hopeless sick person, and being unable to help him/her, inject or enter a super dose of an anesthetizing drug, therefore there comes fast and painless death. The question on the consent of the patient in this case is not put at all, as he/she is not capable of expressing his/her will. 2. The second form of active euthanasia is physician-assisted suicide, occurs with the consent of the patient, the doctor only helps him/her to commit suicide. . The third form is actually suicide occurs without the help of the doctor. The patient himself/herself uses the device, which leads him/her to fast and painless death, simple suicide. (Warren 187-200) We talk about euthanasia only when we deal with deliberate murder. In one case the life of a hopeless, fatally sick person is taken away in order to relieve him/her of superfluous sufferings or by means of direct intervention like lethal injection, or having left him/her to die by stopping to feed the patient( as in the Terry Schiavo case). In the other case of a newborn child with heavy physical defects, the parent of such child could be spared the pain of watching their child suffer â€Å"In 1938 the newly born infant of a family named Knauer served as the pretext for Hitler to set in motion the program of euthanasia he had intended to institute. The Knauer baby, sex unknown, was apparently born with severe handicaps. The exact nature of its affliction cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but testimony does seem to agree that it was born with a leg and part of an arm missing. Some evidence suggests that it was also blind, and the physicians also diagnosed it as an â€Å"idiot. † But its blindness was not noted by all observers, and the diagnosis â€Å"idiot† was not definite. In addition, the baby apparently suffered from convulsions† (Friedlander 39). There kinds of cases show euthanasia to be intentional; the intentional taking of lives that could be sustained through life-support technology. We speak about euthanasia only when there is an intention to put an end to a life of the patientor to speed up his/her death. We don’t speak about euthanasia when trying to facilitate the suffering of any person who is in the last stages of terminal illness, appointing him/her medicines which in only indirect ways can speed up the physiological process of dying. In this case, the purpose is not to help the patient die, but try to reduce his/her pain by means of preparations which only as a by-product are capable of speedy the approach to the end The death here is not provoked purposely, but is a possible consequence of anesthetizing therapy. It is possible to put euthanasia in a line of various medical methods: )Euthanasia is present at hat case when the preparation causes death and also if the patient is deprived of all that is necessary for his/her life (oxygen or food), or all that is good for him/her (intensive care units, where the patient can get better and life without life-support equipments, or such treatment, which will improve the patient health conditions) 2) Euthanasia is not present in a case when such treatment stops which would have adverse effect on the patient, for example, treatment that only would prolong a life in inhumane conditions; 3) Euthanasia is not present in cases of the discontinuance of life support when the condition of cerebral death is irreversible. Any treatment that does not facilitate suffering, does not give any chance of further recovery, but only continues agony and brings intolerable suffering to family and disproportionate charges to the state; 4) Euthanasia is not present in a case of badly degenerated newborn child, or in a heavy pathological case, if it is terminal when it is only artificial it is possible to continue a life, without hope for improvement and for reoccurrence of independent existence; Euthanasia is not present if the fatally ill patient was allowed to die naturally. It is possible only in a case when any therapy would allow prolonging a life only for a short time in intolerable conditions. Two questions arise when we speak about euthanasia: morally, what can we say about a person’ character who commits euthanasia, and legally, whether such actions should be forbidden by the law? Some people assert that though euthanasia is immoral, it is not necessary to forbid it in the legislative order. Three reasons which usually result as arguments against application of criminal sanctions are: first is realizing individual autonomy, second is reducing needless pain and suffering, and third would be providing psychological reassurance to dying patients (Emanuel 637). Others assert that though euthanasia is not wrong in all cases, it should not be allowed by the law. One variant of this argument asserts that euthanasia is morally allowable only in rare cases, but even there it is necessary to forbid it as its practice is easy to abuse, that legalization of euthanasia will bring more harm, than goods. Another variant says, that legalization puts patients in inconvenient positions of choice: whether to continue to live in suffering, or to cut one’s life short. This is a position in which nobody can be put. The value of a human life induces struggle, even to the point of becoming contrary to objective edical laws and in the most hopeless situations as the medical science and practice are rich with cases of healing of the most hopeless patients. Strong pains also are usually the reason of the request of the patient to speed up the approach of death, that is why she/he is compelled and insincere. Here, the doctor should resist them, and suggest the use of anesthetizing means, which the medicine today has available instead of following patient wishes. It is necessary to state firmly once more that nothing and no one can in any way permit the killing of an innocent human being, whether a fetus or an embryo, an infant or an adult, an old person or one suffering from an incurable disease, or a person who is dying. Furthermore, no one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly, nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action. For it is a question of the violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity (Robert, Gorman 158). Other cases when, for example, the person is in a long time coma and his/her consciousness is already lost irrevocably, and progressive medical technologies allow carrying out life-support treatment indefinitely. There is a question: whether or not this is necessary? Unfortunately, there are not unequivocal answers. Many scientists are afraid, that the formal sanction euthanasia can become the certain mental brake for search of new more effective means of diagnostics and treatment of seriously ill patients, and also to promote unconscientiousness in rendering medical aid to such a patient. Resuscitator’s help for his/her demands not only big material input, but also a huge pressure of physical and sincere forces of serving medical staff. Absence of appropriate treatment and care can stimulate requirements of the patient to speed up a fatal outcome that will allow the doctor to completely stop any treatment and care of the terminal patient. And in it one more of the reasons of necessity of legal regulation of the given question. (Keown 37-70) One strong argument against euthanasia is that killing of innocents is always morally evil. Therefore, euthanasia is morally evil. There is no way of disproving the principle: ‘It would always be wrong to kill an innocent human, whatever the consequences of not doing so’† (Steinbock 168). Supporters of euthanasia can appeal to the fact that the above-stated conclusion means distinction between justified and unjustified killings. On what basis is this distinction is made? If some kinds of killings are justified, why it is impossible to justify even in some circumstances voluntary euthanasia? Two kinds of murder are accepted even by many of the most zealous opponents to euthanasia -self-defense and punishment. Either of these is not unfair; as a matter of fact, they are not evil. It is possible to consider voluntary euthanasia as the third kind of justified killing? Lets try to resolve the argument of euthanasia as being beyond unfair murder on the basis of two key statements. First of all, the terminal condition of some people is such than it is better to let them die than to continue to live. A good example of such situations are those patients who suffer from strong pains or are doomed for a life in humiliating dependence on others even in satisfaction of the most elementary needs. Here, as benefiting euthanasia, frequently include the fatally sick and those who are in a constant vegetative condition. Second, helping someone in order to improve his/her health or moral condition is always morally allowable. If killing will improve someones condition, and the person himself/herself wants to die, then how such killing can be considered harmful to this person? How is it possible to consider this act unfair? How can it be wrong? And what then is voluntary euthanasia, if not that? This argument has serious flows, especially when it is used in the justification of the standard sanction. It is necessary to ask, whether or not it is the best way for all those patients, and even if it is so, whether or not their killing is a better alternative to inactivity? First of all it is not clear if fatally sick patients and those in vegetative conditions, benefit from early death. Second, there is a question that can be raised; is really the disgust from dependence on others for the last years of their life based on consciousness of their own advantage instead of on false arrogance? Finally, there are always other ways to dispose of pain. Speaking about euthanasia, it is necessary to face the concept of incurability. When is it possible to say with confidence that the patient is incurable? It is widely known, thatmistakes happen when doctors examine sick persons. Actually, the majorities of doctors remain true to their Hippocratic Oath and prefer to operate as professionals, instead of sympathizing. Suffering causes people to feel sympathy: kill a dog, that is suffering from a pain and doomed to death. Is it possible to give up such an act of mercy? But this pity already itself is ambiguous. Of course, frequently, the pain is intolerable, but quite often it becomes even more intolerable for those near to the patient. Relieving the patient from a pain, we frequently relieve our own suffering. It freedom of a choice of the patient really observed in that case? A call for help is answered by a mortal blow. To cause death first of all means to relieve those close to the patient from the necessity to hear this call: kill me, share my pain and help me! It is more difficult and more humane to accompany the patient in his/her suffering, than to destroy him/her. In conclusion, I would like to say, first, euthanasia (the example of killing innocent) is a moral evil and it should not be allowable by law, even in the cases specified in the standard sanction. Second, the standard sanction on euthanasia is threateningly unstable. One argument for its advantage supposes killing not only on the basis of standard medical reasons, but also in case of depression, shame and self-sacrifice. Another argument supposes euthanasia not only for those who want to die, but also for those who are not competent physically and/or emotionally to make that decision.