...Euthanasia: The Right to Die Tiffany Jackson EG101_U7_IP Professor Weber Due date: 10/22/13 Euthanasia, also known as mercy killing, is the act or practice of ending someone’s life that is in consent pain or is suffering from an illness. There are at least two different kind of euthanasia that are common active and inactive. Whenever euthanasia is performed in an involuntary manner it is usually because the patient is unconscious, or in a vegetable state. People often wonder what would be the pros and cons to euthanasia from religion belief to people’s personal views. With all the debates going on in different countries euthanasia can be proven to be one of the most complicated and debatable topics. People may argue that the process of dying is a part of life. From what people research it showed that if they can make a law behind euthanasia, Article 29-B then having the right to die should not be that bad. Some may say that keeping patients alive may cost a lot of money and can put people in debt with doctor bills, hospital bills that to them seem unnecessary. The same energy that is put into keeping someone alive that does not want to live can be spent saving someone that has a chance in life. Some people may call this voluntary euthanasia. Most patients trust in their doctor to help them deal with their illness and help them stay healthy and fit. As their suffering increases, their self-respect decreases (Kamisar, Yale). Some people are afraid to die so they ask their...
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...through the court system. Despite the testimony of many other medical professionals that she was disabled, the courts stood by the initial decision of the judge. There is no one specific law that governs each state as a whole. Each state has its own ruling on euthanasia. In Texas it states, “A person commits an offense if, with intent to promote or assist the commission of suicide by another, he aids or attempts to aid the other to commit or attempt to commit suicide.” (ProCon.org. 2012) Thirty-six states have specific laws prohibiting all assisted suicides. Seven states prohibit all assisted under common law; four states have no specific laws regarding euthansia. Three states have legalized physician assisted euthanasia, Oregon, Washington and Montana. (Pro.Con.org. 2012) The stake holders in deciding to proceed with euthansia are many including the patient,...
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...to watch this man suffer until he dies. The above scenario is a situation that the terminally ill, their family and healthcare professionals can face. Unfortunately, it is illegal to end someone’s life in this country by administering a lethal dose of medicine. This is known as active euthanasia. The physician administering the lethal dose would be directly causing the patient to die, thereby, killing the patient. Currently a doctor, with the patient or family’s permission can withdraw medical care allowing the patient to die. This is referred to as passive euthanasia. The question is: which is worse? Killing or letting someone die? Active euthanasia versus passive euthanasia? I unequivocally support active euthanasia versus passive euthansia because I believe it is the more humane approach to ending the suffering of the terminally ill patient. Letting someone die through passive euthanasia can take countless hours, days, months and even years of continuous suffering. Is this suffering really necessary?...
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...Assisted Suicide Jennifer Berger PHI 200: Mind and Machine Samuel Grummons September 12, 2011 Assisted suicide, it’s a very controversial topic. Some people are for it and many more are against it as it pushes the moral boundaries of right and wrong. The idea of assisted suicide, (ending a life by one’s choice) is not acceptable in many cultures, religions or personal beliefs, but is it any different that euthanizing an animal because that animal is terminally ill or in excruciating pain with no available treatment? How or why isn’t that seen as immoral and wrong? Is it any different than a person who is in pain suffering from a terminal illness, or in incurable and unmanageable pain from end stage diseases? End stage diseases such as cancer are very painful and no amount of pain medicine to manage pain can bring relief. In my opinion, just as many other choices we as humans are allowed to make, assisted suicide should be one. I have watched two family members now suffer in pain from end of life diseases, one from end stage brain and lung cancer which was diagnosed 3 months before the passing and the other emphasymia for 20 years. Although both deaths were different they both could have used assisted suicide, especially the cancer patient. My children’s great grandmother was 69 when she passed. She was a fairly healthy woman, she worked until 65 and then she watched my oldest daughter for 3 years while I worked. One day she wasn’t feeling well...
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...“Dr. Death” Sydney Speight English B Jack Kevorkian originally wanted to be a baseball radio broadcaster, but his Armenian immigrant parents felt that he should have a more promising career. So he became a doctor, specializing in pathology. Kevorkian worked primarily with deceased people, performing autopsies in order to study the essential nature of diseases. Kevorkian was born on May 28, 1928, in Pontiac, Michigan. He was raised in an Armenian, Greek, and Bulgarian neighborhood. Kevorkian attended the University of Michigan medical school and graduated in 1952. Kevorkian initially received his nickname, "Dr. Death," for his pioneering medical experiments in the 1950's. He photographed the eyes of dying patients in order to determine the exact time of death. As Kevorkian witnessed the suffering of terminally ill patients, he became convinced that they had a moral right to end their lives when the pain became unbearable, and that doctors should assist in this process. To that end, he designed and constructed a machine that started a harmless saline intravenous drip into the arm of a person wishing to die. When the patient was ready, he or she would press a button that would stop the flow of the harmless solution and begin a new drip of thiopental. “This chemical would put the patient into a deep sleep, then a coma. After one minute, the timer in the machine would send a lethal dose of potassium chloride into the patient's arm, stopping the heart in minutes...
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...EUTHANSIA ESSAY To kill somebody you love because they are suffering from a disease or to let them live and suffer horribly every day? That is one of the hardest experiences somebody can ever go through. Personally I pray that I will never have to go through such a tough choice. If you kill them, you have to live with that on your conscious for the rest of your life. But, if you let them live, you have to watch them suffer and struggle every day just to live to the next day. “Cerebral palsy is a group of disorders that can involve brain and nervous system functions such as movement, learning, hearing, seeing, and thinking.” (A.D.A.M. Medical Encyclopedia). Tracy Latimer was only 12 years old when she suffered from Cerebral Palsy. She couldn’t move, hear, see, or anything. She was basically a human vegetable. Her father, Robert, was supposed to take her to get an operation done. Instead, he locked her in the car and let it run, which eventually led her to die from carbon monoxide poisoning. He was convicted of second degree murder and was given a 10 year sentence. Did Robert Latimer do the right thing? Should he be looked at as a danger to society and a murderer? Or should people look at him as somebody that saved his daughters life? Yes, Robert Latimer is unquestionably a murderer. He took away the life of an innocent 12 year old girl who did not do anything wrong in her life. She was not a threat to anybody. All she did was take up air. She couldn’t...
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...Right To DieWeek 11Ken WinklerGE217February 25, 2012Steve Ryan | This paper will cover the topic of the right to die for people who are terminally ill. The issue is physician assisted suicide and should individuals have the right to decide for themselves that they want to have their life terminated. There are no laws against a person taking their own life but a terminally ill person probably would need the help of a physician to take their life, and that it is explicitly illegal in 34 states (Euthansia.com, 2012). Christian clergy state that the laws of the church will not allow anyone to take their own life or to have help in taking their life as it is viewed in the same light as murder. Anyone who chooses physician assisted suicide will have to abandon their religion since they will not have support of their clergymen if they decide to end their life. Since they are terminally ill and not going to be able to do this by themselves, they will need a physician to help. They will have to find a physician who has abandoned the principle of ethical standards that all doctors swear to live by, the Hippocratic Oath. Most Christian and Jewish religious laws forbid any form of assisted suicide and condemn any person who does this or helps anyone with this. Physician assisted suicide is one of those issues that both sides of the argument have strong feelings for supporting their position, the right to die may not invoke fist fights but vastly different opinions exist for it in all...
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...Assisted Suicide PHI 200: Mind and Machine September 12, 2011 Assisted suicide, it’s a very controversial topic. Some people are for it and many more are against it as it pushes the moral boundaries of right and wrong. The idea of assisted suicide, (ending a life by one’s choice) is not acceptable in many cultures, religions or personal beliefs, but is it any different that euthanizing an animal because that animal is terminally ill or in excruciating pain with no available treatment? How or why isn’t that seen as immoral and wrong? Is it any different than a person who is in pain suffering from a terminal illness, or in incurable and unmanageable pain from end stage diseases? End stage diseases such as cancer are very painful and no amount of pain medicine to manage pain can bring relief. In my opinion, just as many other choices we as humans are allowed to make, assisted suicide should be one. I have watched two family members now suffer in pain from end of life diseases, one from end stage brain and lung cancer which was diagnosed 3 months before the passing and the other emphasymia for 20 years. Although both deaths were different they both could have used assisted suicide, especially the cancer patient. My children’s great grandmother was 69 when she passed. She was a fairly healthy woman, she worked until 65 and then she watched my oldest daughter for 3 years while I worked. One day she wasn’t feeling well, the day after Christmas she...
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...hide the murders, in 1935 Hitler stated privately that "in the event of war, he would take up the question of euthanasia and enforce it" because "such a problem would be more easily solved" during wartime (“Euthanasia Killings”). This method of killings goal was to rid the genetically impure or physically different people out of what should have been the pure german race. It had first set its eyes on the adult disabled population of germany ( "The History Place - Holocaust Timeline: Nazi Euthanasia."). Helene Melanie Lebel, was a young Austrian women who loved to swim and go to the opera. In her late teens she developed mental illness and later had a nervous breakdown. When she was just 29 years old she became a victim of the Nazzi’s T-4 euthansia program (“Nazi treatment of the disabled”) Slowly after that it was then centered on the disabled children of the 1930’s, just like before it was mandated that the physicians of the children were to report the child’s physical or mental state. Then the parents were told that they should send their children to a special place where their child would be helped but, in reality these were killing wards, where children were starved and overdosed on drugs leading to their demise.Youth up to 17 years old would be sent to these tortured mental asylums. (“ Euthanasia Program”) A...
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...Physicians-Assisted Suicide Physician-Assisted Suicide is a medical process where a physician supplies a terminally ill patient with a prescription for one dose of lethal medication. The prescription is given to a patient upon request only if the patient intends to end his or her own life because of suffrage from a terminal illness. Today, physicians-assisted suicide is more commonly known as the Death-With-Dignity Act. Recent stories of patients who have attempted to end their own life by lethal medication have made countless headlines concerning the topic throughout many informational sources. Currently, the states of Washington, Oregon, and Vermont are the only three states that have adopted the Death-With-Dignity Act. Physician-Assisted Suicide is among many practices that aid in ending a patient’s life along with DNR’s, DNI’s, and AND’s, when life-sustaining treatments are denied. Physicians-Assisted Suicide is much more controversial than other life ending methods because it enables a patient to end her or her own life in a way that many individuals feel is immoral and unethical. The ethical issues of physicians-assisted suicide are both emotional and controversial, yet healthcare workers deal with a request for this alternative every day. Is physicians-assisted suicide the answer? The question doesn’t come by an easy answer. However, both sides of the debate, either for it or against it, provide strong, concrete points that help truly uncover where the controversy lies...
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...Physician-assisted suicide, the good death, mercy killing, dignified death. These are all names given to EUTHANSIA. But what is euthanasia? And why is it considered to be controversial? Although the definitions used in discussions of euthanasia and assisted suicide can vary, the following are based on Special Senate Committee reports on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide. Euthanasia is the deliberate act undertaken by one person with the intention of ending the life of another person in order to relieve that person’s suffering. Assisted suicide is the act of intentionally killing oneself with the assistance of another who provides the knowledge, means or both. Voluntary euthanasia occurs when the act is done in accordance with the wishes of a competent individual or a valid advance directive. Non-voluntary euthanasia occurs when the act is done without knowledge of the wishes of a competent individual or with respect to an incompetent individual. Involuntary euthanasia, which is indistinguishable from murder or manslaughter, occurs when the act is done against the wishes of a competent individual or a valid advance directive. When talking in terms of the person to die, a competent individual is capable of understanding the nature and consequences of the decision to be made and capable of communicating this decision. An incompetent individual is not capable of understanding the nature and consequences of the decision to be made, and/or is not capable of communicating the...
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...As an Athletic Trainer ethics play a major role. In many cases I evaluate many of the injuries sustained by my student-athletes offering varied suggestions on how we should move forward with either a Doctor Visit or in house rehabilitation. With this responsibility comes opposition from both parents and coaches as they insist I clear an athlete for play or don’t deliver the whole truth to the parents and or coach. Although not as controversial as assisted suicide it poses significant risks and eyebrow raises in the sports world. Doctors, nurses, and various medical personal have a harder role. They wager people’s lives and future and decide in some countries whether or not to permit such an act. In this essay we will explore the facts on Euthanasia: Assisted Suicide, my view, the world view and its progress. Before I begin, however, let me note what I will not try to do. I will not try to show you that Physician Assisted Suicide is a fully justifiable course of action what I will do is give you facts and statistics of this rapidly growing controversial issue.. What I will show you is the compatibility to the commitment to good end-of-life care. One of the most important public policy debates today surrounds the issues of euthanasia and assisted suicide. The outcome of that debate to whether or not it should be made available will profoundly affect family relationships, interaction between doctors and patients, and concepts of basic ethical behavior. Although not accepted widespread...
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...Claiming the Right to Die Can it be true that there may be no cure for terminal illnesses? It appears that many patients are diagnose with illnesses that cannot be cured but only treated. Although, treatments are effective in some way, there is absolutely no cure for that disease. Therefore, many patients with incurable illnesses have made a decision that they believe was right for them. This righteous act was known to be part of Euthanasia, which is considered being “the Right to Die”. So what is Euthanasia? In Greek language, the word “Euthanasia” eu means "good" and thanatos means "death". One meaning given to the word is "the intentional termination of life by another at the explicit request of the person who dies." Therefore, the term euthanasia practically means that the act must be initiated or agreed upon by the person who wishes to commit suicide. But as a disagreement, some people define euthanasia to include both voluntary and involuntary termination of life. In his book Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America, William Colby states that "euthanasia" defines multiple meanings and yet, leads to a massive confusion. For example, for today’s world, it is defined as the “intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit.” This literally means that if death is not intended, then it is not an act of euthanasia. Others would also recognize it as “mercy killing” or “physician-assisted suicide”. Now many will ask...
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...International NGO Journal Vol. 3 (12), pp. 224-231, December, 2008 Available online at http:// www.academicjournals.org/INGOJ ISSN 1993–8225 © 2008 Academic Journals Article Euthanasia – A dignified end of life! Vaibhav Goel Faculty of Law Addis Ababa University Addis Ababa Ethiopia. E-mail: vaibhav_hnlu@yahoo.co.in. Accepted 27, October 2008 Survival is undoubtedly valuable but some time and in certain condition life becomes painful and impossible or unbearable, in that stage survilance seems, like a curse or abuse. Euthanasia – a new word for masses become common about four years back in the month of December 2004 because of Venkatesh plea for granting him right to die. Euthanasia is nothing else but a permit or license to the medical professional for ending the life of a person in question. No doubt if it will be permitted in laws, may be the biggest threat to the creature. In fact the concept is debatable; here the key question is “What should be the ingredients of law which would legalize Euthanasia?” Hence the purpose of writing this paper is to examine the questions pertaining to Euthanasia, especially in the light of traditional perspective besides legal dimensions of MTP and to suggest legal aspects of the same to make life with dignity even at the time of end. In addition the second key question may be that if it permitted weather it will be on the recommendation of the doctors or in the consent of the relative of the Patient? Keywords: Euthanasia, PAS, Suicide...
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