...incurable pancreatic cancer. No amount of pain medication is available to treat her pain and allow her to maintain consciousness. She knows her time is limited and she does not feel she should have to wait out the inevitable in such a terrible state. At the same time the family pet Bassett hound is found to have a mass in her intestines. She cannot eat and barely moves as she is in so much pain. The veterinarian has given the option of putting her to sleep or euthanizing her to put her out of her misery as she is suffering so. This sits well with most people. Aunt Bessie requesting euthanization though is out of the question. Why is the question that this paper will attempt to answer and why this is wrong will also be addressed? Euthanasia Defined Euthanasia can bring about different feelings to people depending on the context in which it is used. Mention that good old dog and it is good as they no longer suffering. Change the identity to a person and it is not so easily swallowed. No matter how it is...
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...0521804167 - Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument Against Legalisation John Keown Frontmatter More information EUTHANASIA, ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY An Argument against Legalisation Whether the law should permit voluntary euthanasia or physicianassisted suicide is one of the most vital questions facing all modern societies. Internationally, the main obstacle to legalisation has proved to be the objection that, even if they were morally acceptable in certain hard cases, voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide could not be effectively controlled; society would slide down a slippery slope to the killing of patients who did not make a free and informed request, or for whom palliative care would have offered an alternative. How cogent is this objection? This book provides the general reader (who need have no expertise in philosophy, law or medicine) with a lucid introduction to this central question in the debate, not least by reviewing the Dutch euthanasia experience. It will interest readers in any country, whether for or against legalisation, who wish to ensure that their opinions are better informed. john keown is Senior Lecturer in the Law and Ethics of Medicine, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge. His previous publications include Abortion, Doctors and the Law (1988) and Euthanasia Examined (1995). © Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 0521804167 - Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument Against...
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...AND EThICAL IssUEs Of EUThANAsIA: ARGUmENTATIvE EssAy Bilal S. H. Badr Naga Majd T. Mrayyan (1) Bilal S. H. Badr Naga., MSN, RN, Prince Sultan Cardiac Center in Qassim, Saudi Arabia (2) Majd T. Mrayyan., Prof, RN, The Hashemite University, Jordan Correspondence: Bilal S. H. Badr Naga., MSN, RN, Prince Sultan Cardiac Center in Qassim, Saudi Arabia Email: Bilal_badrnaga@yahoo.com Case scenario Abstract Euthanasia is one of the issues that has been the subject of intense debate over time. It has been a pertinent issue in human rights discourse as it also affects ethical and legal issues pertaining to patients and health care providers. This paper discusses the legal and ethical debates concerning both types of euthanasia. It focuses on both the supporter of euthanasia and the opponent of euthanasia. Several statements for the Euthanasia argument arediscussed: a merciful response that alleviates the suffering of patients which is sometimes wrongly perceived to be otherwise unrelievable; the autonomy in which the patient has the right to make his own choices; the regulation and legislation of existing practices of euthanasia to protect health care providers and patients. In this heated debate religious, political, ethical, legal and personal views are also included. Among all these, those who desperately want to end their lives because they simply cannot go on in any way, are the ones who suffer. Every individual or group has a different viewpoint regarding euthanasia. Euthanasia...
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...2 April 2014 Rhetorical Analysis: Euthanasia Particular Analysis There are three key audiences of the text for William F. May's “Rising to the Occasion of Our Death.” The first audience, in this case, would be legislative organizations or lawmakers who have researched and studied similar cases regarding euthanasia. Since May was as an ethics professor at Southern Methodist University, his tone is decidedly intellectual. An uneducated individual would find it more difficult to read his essay; for example, in declarations such as “Advocates of active euthanasia appeal to the principle of patient autonomy,” May's syntax and tone is formal, informative, and utilizes heavy technical jargon (May 662). In other words, it is authoritative, and enables the audience to view him as a credible source due to his syntactical confidence. Other organizations, lobbyists, or lawmakers who are researching evidence on euthanasia would certainly benefit from reading his expert opinion on the matter. Moreover, his desire to develop a “judicious, regulated policy” is a certain acknowledgement that he is attempting to legally call for regulations on euthanasia (May 662). The second audience that May is appealing to are conservative Christians, who are distinctively pro-life. As his article was originally published in well-circulated The Christian Century magazine, addressing this audience exposes members of May's audience who are unfamiliar with euthanasia to its technicalities by debating...
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...of life. However, the ethical issue we have taken up is about death which is induced before time. The background setting for our live case is the very debatable issue of “Euthanasia”. Literally, euthanasia means “Good Death” (Greek: eu = good, thanatos = death). More formally, euthanasia means the intentional act or practice of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from an incurable and distressing disease as an act of mercy, which is not necessarily at the request of the patient. Forms of Euthanasia: • Voluntary euthanasia: When the patient has requested the death. • Non-voluntary: When the patient has not made any request and gave no consent. • Assisted suicide: 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." • Euthanasia by Action: Intentionally causing a person's death by performing an action such as by giving a lethal injection. • Euthanasia by Omission: Intentionally causing death by not providing necessary and ordinary (usual and customary) care or food and water. Euthanasia evokes a mixed reaction among people who come across it. For some, it is unimaginable to end a human life and yet some think it is justified to end a life which is not worth of dignity. There are several moral and ethical issues concerning this...
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...foundation of ethical theories. We can talk about two main general categories in which we can place the ethical theories: teleological and deontological. From the first category we enumerate the Aristotelian perspective or the one developed by J. St. Mill, while the Kantian perspective is exemplary for deontological ethics. According to the teleological perspective, a form of human behavior is described as moral or non-moral according to the goals explicitly set. The mere achievement of these goals is a necessary and sufficient condition to qualify as moral people’s actions or deeds without taking into account the “intermediate stages” of the actions performed to achieve those goals. Deontology, as a general horizon of articulating the ethical theories, believes on the contrary that in every moment of our existence, every action or deed that we accomplish can be described as moral or non-moral according to the ethical principles underlying our behavior. The very important consequences arising from the two general theoretical horizons concern two different perspectives on “human nature”, or what we call the essence of the human being. Starting from this horizon we will have the consequentialist and deontological dimensions related to euthanasia. The bioethical dimension in which we will discuss the issue of euthanasia involves both dimensions or horizons. The arguments against euthanasia seem to rely rather on the Kantian deontological horizon, while euthanasia pros seem...
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...P393 26 June 2013 Put Out to Pasture: The Problem with Euthanasia I have decided to write my paper on Euthanasia as the topic elicits all types of opinions and conversion on the matter. It is definitely a hot button topic when it comes to Ethical dilemmas, theories, principles, and how society should precede with this in application of law and legislation. I believe that allowing for Euthanasia globally and nationally will begin to further erode the very moral and ethical fiber that separates man from animal. I further support my stand with the example of abortion, and even though opinion hasn’t changed much in the 40 years since Roe vs. Wade allowed for abortion to take place, still millions of babies have been killed despite to negative opinions about it. My hypothesis on this issue is that if nationally legalized it would lead to an untold amount of elderly, handicapped, ill, poor, and lonely people vulnerable to being put to death against their wishes and before their time. The aim of this paper it too show that indeed legalizing “Euthanasia” or “Patient Assisted Suicide” would indeed lead us down the “slippery slope. This first step for me in this paper would be to talk about the theories and principles behind not being pro-euthanasia. There are a number of ethical principles that are deontological in nature, are part of the natural moral law, and relevant to the kinds of dilemmas that occur in euthanasia cases.Four of them are as follows: 1. The Principle of Autonomy...
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...The ethical dilemma of euthanasia Euthanasia is a sensitive and controversial topic that is enveloped in endless ethical debate and ambiguity. There are several forms of euthanasia, each having arguments for and against. Active euthanasia is when death is brought about by an act – carried out by a person to cause the patient to die, for example giving the patient an overdose of medication. Passive euthanasia is when death is brought about by an omission – withdrawing life extending treatment. Voluntary euthanasia is when the patient wants to die and requests help to do so. Non-voluntary euthanasia usually occurs when a patient does not have the capacity to make their wishes known, for example a patient who is severely brain damaged. Involuntary euthanasia is often viewed as murder, when a person does not want to die but is killed anyway. (bbc.co.uk, 2009). Euthanasia is currently illegal throughout the UK, reflecting the status quo of most countries, although there are a few countries where acts of euthanasia are legally permitted under certain highly regulated conditions. Under the Suicide Act 1961 any person that “aids, abets, counsels, or procures” in the suicide (or attempted suicide) of another will be liable for a prison sentence not exceeding fourteen years. (Suicide Act 1961 section (2) 1). However people are not prevented from using services where euthanasia is legal. This attracts no liability if the patient is capable of coming to this arrangement by themselves...
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...Euthanasia Euthanasia - Deep sympathy for the suffering Introduction Euthanasia is the deliberate killing either by omission or commission of a dependent person for their benefit. Arguments against euthanasia claim that the concern for happiness and human life and not their obliteration is the objective of any good governance. They say that the terminally ill are people who require protection from social, economic and family pressures, and who are particularly prone to this pressure as a result of chronic depression, pain and effects of continued medication. Arguments for euthanasia say it is impossible to maintain quality of life if a patient is dead. While there have been massive arguments, debates and campaigns against euthanasia, this paper will seek to support euthanasia because of the moral issues that relate to the topic. This paper supports that when a personal is physically dead, the only reason anybody wishes to keep them alive is for their selfish clinging onto them with the hope of a miracle and the fear of closure without regard to the wishes of the person. It supports the practice of euthanasia and seeks to evaluate the reasons why euthanasia should be legalized. This paper will have a general audience because of the controversy that it sparks every time it comes up Death is a dreaded subject for all human beings because it signifies leaving the known to go to the unknown. This is the reason why by its nature euthanasia is a hugely hushed up topic...
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...Euthanasia is a word coined from the Greek language, Eu meaning good or noble; Thanatos meaning death, in the seventeenth century by Francis Bacon to refer to an easy, painless, happy death. (Singer) Within euthanasia, there are two types. Active and passive. Active euthanasia occurs when a medical professional or another person deliberately does something to cause the death of a patient. Passive euthanasia occurs when a medical professional either stops doing something that is keeping a patient alive or they don’t do something necessary to keep a patient alive. Like switching off life support or disconnecting a feeding tube. A term that is commonly confused, but is similar to euthanasia, is physician assisted suicide. Although the results and reasoning’s behind each type of death is the same, they differ in the way that the death is administered. In euthanasia, the physician performs the intervention. Usually with a lethal dose of a powerful drug such as morphine or Pentobarbital. During physician assisted suicide, the drug, and means of delivery, are given to the patient by the physician. However, the patient accomplishes the act of injection. Leading to his or her own death (A General History Of Euthanasia) The first time euthanasia was reported on record was around 400BC by Suetonius, a Roman historian, while describing the death of Augustus Caesar. Although the actions of an easy, painless death have been used on hopeless patients since ancient times, these acts have been...
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...nurses in euthanasia is prohibited as those acts are in contradiction of the code of ethics for nurses. Nurses have a duty to provide humane, comprehensive and compassionate care in respect to the rights of patients, but maintain the standard of the profession in the presence of chronic, debilitating illness and at the end of life. Voluntary euthanasia is the act of taking a life painlessly especially to relief suffering from an incurable illness, with the consent of a dying patient. Denying people such wishes can lead to unnecessary suffering. There are two types of euthanasia; involuntary, where patients refuse to consent and non-voluntary, patients unable to consent. Euthanasia can have great impact on the society. It affects everyone one way or another. Although a person has autonomy to make decisions about his end of life care doesn’t take away from the fact that their family and friends will be affected with guilt, anger and bitterness. Voluntary euthanasia can hamper efforts to advance medical research in finding cures for diseases (Saunders, 2011). As the nurse taking care of a terminally ill patient, the husband confides in you that he promised his dying wife that he would assist her in taking her own life when the pain became more than she could bear. The ethical dilemma for this nurse is does she keep this information to herself or does she report this to the correct authority. There are four fundamental principles that should be used to guide ethical judgments...
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... The Midterm covers all the material discussed in class so far. What you need to know: Logic • • • You should know what the following are: proposition, argument, premise, conclusion, circular argument, conditional statement, antecedent, consequent. You should be able to give precise definitions of validity and soundness, and be able to evaluate whether an argument is valid or sound. You should be able to recognize the following forms of an argument, and know whether they are valid: Affirming the Antecedent (Modus Ponens), Denying the Consequent (Modus Tollens), Denying the Antecedent, and Affirming the Consequent. Ethics • • • • • • • You should know what the following words mean: ethics, right, wrong, permissible, obligatory, impermissible. You should know the difference between ethics and axiology, and the difference between ethics and law. You should understand: Ethical Relativism, Personal Relativism, and Cultural Relativism. o You should understand the objections to these views that we discussed in class. o You should understand and be able to assess the Cultural Differences Argument and the Provability Argument. You should understand: Divine Command Theory, the Euthyphro Dilemma, and the limitations of religious guidance in ethics. You should understand: Ethical Darwinism, and the Naturalistic Fallacy. You should understand: Utilitarianism. o You should be able to give the proper formulation of Utilitarianism, and be able...
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...Euthanasia Nicholas A. Manuel SOC120 Intro. to Ethics and Social Responsibility Brandon Wolfe 24 June 2013 - You always here the ones that you love say, when my time comes to die, just kill me and don’t let me suffer. For some people this is easier said then done and to partake in this action will be assisting someone in his or her suicide, which has been also known as euthanasia. Euthanasia faces ethical problems that question’s the caregivers medical integrity, the common argument that God is the only one can take someone’s life, and the fact that it is considered murder. I will discuss which one of the three classical theories would resolve these problems, as well as discuss one out of three contrary perspectives. We don’t want to see our love ones suffer just as much as we do not want to see some one end their life. A decision that is life threating with any decision that is made. There are three classical theories in ethics that describes the reasoning behind ones actions or thought process. Those theories are utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. The theory that would resolve the problem of euthanasia would be that of virtue ethics. “Virtue Ethics is an ethical theory that evaluates the morality of the person doing a given act, rather than the act itself. Virtue ethics thus emphasizes that the various virtues and whether a person reflects those virtues in his or her actions are crucial to moral evaluation” Mosser (2010). Where some believe that this...
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...Ethical Analysis of Weensolsen’s The Art of Dying Excelsior College Abstract In The Art of Dying, How to Leave This World with Dignity and Grace, at Peace with Yourself and Your loved Ones, Patricia Weenolsen, Ph.D. takes a practical approach to show the reader how the process of dying can actually bring emotional healing. In her book Patricia Weenolsen makes a strong case for euthanasia. Even though only a pages deal directly with euthanasia directly, the overarching theme of The Art of Dying deals with a “good death” and thusly exerting no small amount of influence on ones departure from this life and surrounding circumstances. In dealing with the emotions surrounding the death process, the reader is given tools that result in some small measure of control that inevitably leads to contemplation of euthanasia. In what I would term a most compassionate manner, Patricia Weenolsen takes the reader on a journey through the end of life, helping the reader to prepare for the final pages of this life. Keywords: euthanasia, death, dying, Patricia Weenolsen Introduction In her book, The Art of Dying: How to Leave This World With Dignity and Grace, at Peace With Yourself and Your Loved Ones, Patricia Weenolsen, Ph.D. delivers a compelling argument for euthanasia that will cause readers to consider the manner in which they choose to leave this life both physically and mentally. While arguments can be made against euthanasia, the ability of terminally ill patients of...
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...“Duty over a Right: Euthanasia Weighed” “Duty over a Right: Euthanasia Weighed” Euthanasia is a highly emotive and contentious subject, giving rise to a great deal of conflicts. However, despite its frequent exposure in public and professional media, there appears to be a lack of clarity about the concepts and definitions used in the euthanasia controversy. This suggests that discussions on this subject are inadequately informed and ineffectual. The ethical focus of the euthanasia issue concerns the moral legitimacy of ‘voluntary euthanasia.’ Euthanasia is a deliberate intervention or omission with the express intention of hastening or ending an individual’s life, to relieve intractable pain or suffering. As per the given problem of a 60 year old patient with stage 4 cancer asking for euthanasia, I would choose to be the lawyer of the doctor who refuses to perform euthanasia. ETHICAL AND LEGAL ASPECTS My client’s refusal of performing euthanasia is primarily because the act itself is against the principles of Beneficence, Nonmaleficence and Life Preservation. By virtue of the Principle of Beneficence, one should act to further the welfare and benefits of another and to prevent evil or harm to that person. Also, the Principle of Nonmaleficence provides that one should refrain from inflicting harm or unduly risking the infliction of harm on another. Lastly, we have a moral duty to protect and preserve human life whenever possible as within the context of life preservation...
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