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Active And Passive Euthanasia Research Paper

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The Disparity of Active and Passive Euthanasia
The year 1976, as a law professor at Rutgers Law School and an author of multiple medical books named Norman L. Cantor recounted, faced a time of controversy in the medical field. A twenty-one-year-old woman named Karen Ann Quinlan became the topic of discussion after she suffered irreversible brain damage caused by drug and alcohol abuse. She fell into a permanent coma and was connected to a respirator in order to keep her heart beating; she received her nutrition and hydration from tubes. Her parents, after much deliberation, elected to remove their unresponsive daughter from life-support apparatuses. Due to a ruling of the New Jerseyan state court, her mother and father’s wishes were fulfilled. …show more content…
It differs from its active counterpart because nothing is done to take a life; rather, the nature of passive euthanasia is to let a disease take its course. Its meaning could range from rebuffing life-prolonging or life-saving treatments or procedures, to removing a patient from life support, to voluntary starvation. For instance, Karen Ann Quinlan’s euthanization is classified as passive, as she was taken off the machines that kept her alive; thusly, she was not given anything that directly caused her to die. Joel Beckwith, an associate of Southern Illinois University’s School of Law, provided another case of passive euthanasia that centers around a boy named Peter. Born with spina bifida, “a congenital defect that causes a portion of the spinal cord to protrude outside of the vertebrae”, Peter needed several corrective operations (Beckwith 273). As Beckwith rehashed, Peter’s family could not afford the surgeries, and although spina bifida is not a life-threatening condition, Peter’s parents decided to euthanize him; the newborn was sedated, and all nourishment and hydration was withheld, causing him to pass away after several days. Furthermore, the voluntary refusal to drink or eat (VSED) is another method of passive euthanasia (Lachman 57). Lachman also noted that VSED is explicitly not caused by a condition or disease as it would then cease to be

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