Ethical Issues Of Euthanasia

Abstract: This paper discusses the medical ethics of Physician Assisted Suicide (PAS). Focusing on the ideas of legal vs illegal, the different views of PAS will both be addressed. While active euthanasia is illegal, passive euthanasia, or allowing natural death, is completely legal everywhere. PAS will help patients end suffering for themselves at the end of their lives, as well as the family's. The price of the drug may be expensive but the price of medical treatments continues to rise. The Hippocratic Oath does not support the aid in ending a life, however it has been changed in the past. Many citizens are afraid that is PAS was considered legal, it would grow into something even more illegal being debated. Also, the religious aspect of the end of life had conflicting views as some believe PAS is ending suffering, a good deed, and other believe PAS is not respecting a human life. PAS is only legal in seven states but has gained the attention of many others and other places around the world.

People who are for assisted suicide make the argument that people who are in pain and don’t have long to live should have the choice to end their lives. But because of palliative sedation people don’t feel severe pain. One doctor said “I aid people in dying by treating their symptoms and supporting them through the difficult practical and emotional tasks of completing their lives. In more than 35 years of practice I have never once has to kill a patient to alleviate the persons suffering.” (Byock)

Imagine a cancer patient on a short rode to death. The pain this patient is experiencing is unreal and unimaginable to most. The pain medicine that can be used does little to take the agony away. The doctors can put the patient in an induced coma, but what kind of living is that? It is not living. The patient does not want to go on. Is it so wrong to ask for a way out? With less than six months to live, the patient’s hope is gone. Many argue that euthanasia is not ethical, but is it really ethical to let someone live in constant, horrifying pain and agony? While in some cases having the right to die might result in patients giving up on life, physician-assisted suicide should be legalized in all fifty states for terminally ill patients with worsening or unbearable pain.

A woman is thrashing in bed and crying from the pain her illness is causing her to feel. Her family rushes to find a nurse nearby to administer pain relieving medication. A nurse comes by to give palliative care to the woman that’s in agony. However, the strongest medication that’s at hand cannot relieve the pain without overdosing the patient. The terminally ill patient now has to live with intractable pain for the remaining days of her life. Physician Assisted Death is sometimes necessary in case state-of-the-art palliative care no longer works on the cancer patient. Terminal patients should have the option to control the circumstances surrounding their inevitable deaths with Physician Assisted Death to treat the pain.

New issues and ethical questions have arisen as a result in technological advances in the field of medicine. One of these issues is quality of life for the individual. Is it better to keep a person hooked up to a life machine, if the person has no quality of life? That is there is no interaction with other humans and the person is only being kept alive because the machines are handling vital bodily functions. These advances add to moral dilemma of physician-assisted suicide and to the intense debate if the practice of physician-assisted death is ethical. Furthermore, there are direct and indirect physician-assisted suicide practices. Direct physician-assisted suicide practices include: administering a legal dose of drugs to end a life, withdrawing or withholding life sustaining treatments, and palliative sedation. Indirect physician-assisted suicides are a little bit different in that the physician may give

Physician assisted death, often referred to as death with dignity or euthanasia, is a practice that is debated globally and practiced limitedly. It is when a physician helps a patient with a terminal condition carry out their elective death, usually through prescriptions or other medical means. The debate regarding this controversial practice has many sides, one being the defense of the sanctity of life. This claim operates on the premise that human lives have innate value as determined by God, and therefore physician assisted death is an unjust practice and an invalidation of the worth of human life. However, as demonstrated by the philosopher Sartre, it becomes evident that each individual creates and determines their own significance,

Physician Assisted Suicide has been a very controversial topic in the recent years. P.A.S can also be known as physician assisted death or euthanasia. Many states wonder wither this practice is morally right or wrong. Physician Assisted Suicide is when a doctor administers patient lethal drugs, upon the request of the patient, with the end result being death. A popular question that surfaces when this topic is brought up is: Who should decide if a terminally ill patient had the right to commit physician assisted suicide? In support of the previous statements, this

Lachman explores the ethical alternative to Physician Assisted Suicide (PSA) for patients with a terminal illness. She strongly emphasizes the right of the patients to be fully informed of the other options they have available to them such as Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking. VSED is a legal treatment available in all states unlike PSA which is only legal in five states. Terminally ill patients typically feel that they do not wish to carry out the last moments of their life as a burden to their families and would rather rush their death. In these desperate situations they feel that the death in minutes, provided by the over dosage of prescribed lethal medication, PSA is a better alternative than VSED. Patients are not fully informed of the ethical benefits of VSED. According to Lachman, through VSED the patient dies of terminal dehydration and the discomfort they may feel during the process can be managed with the correct palliative care. By choosing to refuse life sustaining nutrients the patient can die in their own terms while allowing their body to perform a natural form of death. She indicates that VSED is also a form in which the patient will not have to feel the excoriating pain that they fear and will actually lose conscious during their final moments of the 1-3 week

Patients suffering from terminal illnesses, battle feeling worthless and hopeless on a daily basis. This is due to our jurisdiction forcing them to live. The number of people suffering continues to increase. Although a doctor’s position is to prolong life, euthanasia should be considered in certain cases. Because of the advances in technology euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are now an option for terminally ill patients who are going to suffer from an incurable and painful disease or are in an irreversible coma. Euthanasia and physician assisted suicide should be legalized because the public supports it, it would only be used for patients who are terminally ill, and it alleviates unnecessary suffering. The word euthanasia originates

The French proposal to amend the Public Health Act to include a right to perpetual deep sedation for some patients is a unique opportunity to demystify the licitness of perpetual deep sedation as a terminus-of-life practice. Moreover, it would apperceive that the practice of perpetual deep sedation raises ethical and licit issues that are different from those raised by symptom control on the one hand and availed dying on the other hand. Nevertheless, there are still sundry issues of paramount ethical concern in the French legislative

The controversy of a doctor assisting their patient who is already dying, end their life sooner to save them from continuous unnecessary pain and agony has been the topic of controversy for years. The practice of euthanasia is in my opinion a mercy and should not be banned because in reality it doesn’t physically hurt anyone. You could say it hurts the patient but then again that patient is already in tremendous pain or in an incapacitated state of no recovery, as in paralyzed or brain damage etc., so in reality it would actually help them by assisting ending their pain by assisted suicide. A doctors job is also always help their patients and the practice of assisted suicide in many ways is actually helping the person. However there has and probably always will be people who do not agree with the idea of a dying person end their life for sooner than nature had intended. This demographic would suggest that by dying by your own hand or assisted by a physician for medical reasons is still considered plain suicide. And for the religious people it is a sin by their beliefs. The people could also argue that it is not a person’s right to make that decision.

When there is no more left that can be done or a patient simply refuses treatment physicians rely heavily on palliative sedation to ease the suffering of the patient and wait for “nature to run its course”. This seems to be the method of choice and the most humane way to die. The line between active euthanasia and palliative sedation is thin. Timing seems to be a driving factor as active would most definitely be more immediate and palliative is aided by powerful pain medications that allow the patient to die more naturally. Too much pain medication can kill someone too so, the correct dosage is vital so that the patient falls to the ailment and not a drug overdose. Physicians justify this method because either they have done all they could

The ethical issue is Euthanasia, there are many groups that support or oppose this issue. Euthanasia is the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. The different viewpoints are based around whether it is humane to assist someone in dying and whether it should be illegal for someone to assist the death of someone who has a terminal illness and are suffering incurable pain. Groups that oppose the issue generally believe that it is inhumane to end someone 's life early, these groups generally believe these people should be given care and as much comfort as possible until their last days. Groups that support the issue generally believe that if someone has lost their mental state or are suffering unbearable pain that cannot be cured, that they should be allowed the option of euthanasia because it is inhumane to make someone suffer unbearable pain if they do not need to. An ethical issue brings systems of morality and principles into conflict, ethical issues are more subjective and opinionated and generally cannot be solved with facts, laws and truth. Euthanasia is an ethical issue because there are two equally unacceptable options. It is considered wrong

Ethical dilemma occurs when there are two ways of doing things. One way can be the moral way by taking any decision and other can be the legal way. It is a situation which can involve an apparent conflict between moral values or actions which if obeyed, may result in emotional decisions taken (Allen, 2012) In order to determine an ethical dilemma it is necessary to make a distinction between ethics, values, morals and other law and policies. Ethical dilemma also involves the distinction between personal, emotional and professional actions. Giving an example of the ethical dilemma if a patient is on its last stage there can be an argument of giving the patient sedation so that the patient is relaxed and his pain is relieved or the patient should be left on his own so that he or she can talk and respond to the family members so that people around them can interact for the last time (Gwyther, 2011). If the sedation is given the patient is relaxed and if sedation is not given the patient can be in pain, may be screaming which can make the people around him uncomfortable. This type of sedation that is used at the last stage of life is known as palliative sedation. There is the argument going on in the favor and against of palliative seduction. This essay will give the reasons and facts in favor of giving the palliative sedation as it relieves the patient from the pain who is already in its final stage of life and want to leave the world in peace. It also reduces the

Most adults diagnosed with cancer undergo years of treatment in attempts to cure that cancer. However, sometimes these treatments may not work, or the cancer is found too late in a patient to be stopped, and a patient’s cancer can be determined terminal, which means that the cancer can not be cured and will lead to death. If cancer is determined terminal, end-of-life care can be administered patients to control lasting pains, including shortness of breath, nausea, and constipation. However, this treatment does not cure the cancer, and will not prevent death in a terminally ill cancer patient. In some cases, patients decide that receiving end-of-life treatment is not worth it if the treatment does not prevent death. Terminally ill cancer patients may also continue to experience unbearable suffering, despite end-of-life treatments, as it is not always effective. These factors may push some terminally ill cancer patients to request to be actively euthanized. Active euthanasia is the merciful ending of a patient’s life through a single act, such as an injection. Terminally ill cancer patients should have the right to determine if they are actively euthanized. However, only patients who consider their suffering unbearable should have the right to be euthanized.