...Reflection: Euthanasia In the classroom text there is a chapter on Euthanasia, which I wasn’t even aware of. After reading the section, practicing euthanasia requires many ethical and moral decisions to be made. There must be rules and extreme caution because it is the decision on a person’s life. It is important to distinguish the difference between active and passive euthanasia. Active, is the process when drugs are administered, or using certain death-causing means to bring about tor cause the death of a person. Passive, is the process of withholding or withdrawing certain treatment and letting the person die. Both reasons for being used is to help the person have a good or better death. First thing that I thought is that in order to legally and ethically perform this would require many guidelines and rules. Also, while following certain rules before ending someone’s life, this should help you in making a moral and right decision. No doctor would ever want to let someone suffer, however you would just have to be sure that it was the right thing. In the Netherlands, there is a historical tradition of active euthanasia. There is a law that allows the physicians to medically end a patient’s life as long as there are certain conditions met. Conditions such as; the patient must be faced with unbearable and continuing suffering (although he or she need not be terminally ill, and the suffering need not be physical only), or the doctor must consult with at least one...
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...Note: Since the morals of the fables can be somewhat subjective, there are no technically "wrong" answers, but some are better than others and in some cases more than one is better than others. In the answers below there are some questions with more than one answer so you will have a chance to defend your answer after each question. 1. A miser hid his gold at the foot of a tree in his garden. Every week he dug it up and gloated over his gains. A robber, who noticed this, dug up the gold and stole it. When the miser next came to gloat over his treasures, he found only the empty hole. He tore his hair, and raised such an outcry that all the neighbors came. The miser told them how he used to visit his gold. "Did you ever take any of it out?" asked one of them. "No," the miser replied. "I only came to look at it." "Then come again and look at the hole," said a neighbor. "It will do you just as much good." Moral: a. If you're going to hoard, don't gloat over it. b. If you're going to gloat over your wealth, don't let anybody see you doing it. c. Hoarding doesn't do anybody any good. d. A penny saved is a penny earned. Explain your answer: Though my choice is to not gloat at all, of these choices, the one that I picked felt the most natural. If you have something worth gloating over then it must be worth something to somebody else. If you don’t show it off then people wouldn’t steal from you cause they don’t know if the things you have is worth the trouble of stealing. ...
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...| | |Euthanasia | |Pros and Cons of Euthanasia | | | |Lisa Rohn | |10/20/2010 | |Euthanasia is a highly controversial topic among many political and religious groups. The purpose of this project is to detail the facts of | |Euthanasia and to list the pros and cons surrounding the topic. Euthanasia is prohibited in the United States. However I will show that | |patients practice forms of this “mercy killing” legally each day while exercising their right to die. This project will list guidelines in | |which Euthanasia should be legalized and give arguments as to why the decision should be the sole right of the suffering individual. | Imagine that your mother...
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...Euthanasia/Assisted Suicide Debate Of course we want our loved ones to be a part of our lives as long as possible and thanks to modern medical technology, the average human life span is about seventy-eight years. Yet, some of us get sick, diseased or injured in an accident and become comatose. When the medical condition of a person is deemed progressive, terminal and there is no hope of recovery, that person should be able to exercise the option of ending their life. Particularly, when that individual feels he or she cannot stand the suffering in the last stages of their disease. Moreover, if a person has sustained an injury where their brain is not functional or damaged beyond basic functions, euthanasia is an option to lengthy life-sustaining treatment methods that may be futile. However, euthanasia has been a debated topic since the Greek-written Hippocratic Oath. This Oath is one of the first statements of moral conduct where doctors and health care professionals profess to do no harm by practicing medicine ethically. There are many opinions that in certain special populations, such as minorities and the disabled, euthanasia and assisted suicide give ways to possible abuse of the health care system. The three states that that now allow assisted suicide are Washington (2008), Montana (2008), and Oregon (1994), euthanasia is still illegal in the United States. The difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide is the administration of the lethal drugs to...
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...TOPIC: SHOULD EUTHENASIA BE ILLEGAL? A Thin Line Between Life & Death Health issues have been one of the most commonly argued and controversial issues that countries are debating over the past years. For centuries people were concerned about their health and as the years passed, the world became a place more challenging and more dangerous to live. People felt themselves in threat and thus, they formed states to provide protection for them. Everyone thought that it would be better to live in a group rather than to live as an individual. As a result of this, states vowed to keep their citizens’ right to live. Euthanasia is something contrary to that. Making euthanasia illegal is one of those health issues that have been debated a lot. Some countries try to protect their citizens by illegalizing euthanasia, while some other countries like Belgium, Luxemburg and Switzerland defend that the patient must decide his own fate. In my opinion, euthanasia is a right. Illegalizing euthanasia threatens individual rights and it creates an economic and mental problem for the patient and his family. First of all, euthanasia is an individual right and no authority should prohibit a citizen to use his natural right. Patients choose euthanasia not because they want to. It is a very serious decision. Many patients who choose euthanasia are patients with terminal illnesses such as some kinds of cancer, trauma or Alzheimer. In such cases, the only thing that the patient can do is to wait for...
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...A few days passed when Mary Beth and her husband demanded for the infant and then abducted the infant. William and Elizabeth Stern decided to sue her for violating the agreement, and they wanted to be recognized as the legal parents for the infant. As events unfolded, the case quickly gained a lot of controversy and a lot of questions of morals and ethics surfaced, and legal issues took place. Surrogacy conflicts in the Baby M case caused problems which, like euthenasia and abortion, had no satisfactory solution that society would happily agree upon. According to “What the Baby M Case Is Really About” by Judith T. Younger, it stated that William Stern had the “right to procreate and the right of the biological father to his children” (75). On the other hand, Mary Beth Whitehead obtains the same right of being the biological mother to her children (75). There is a wide debate in society regarding which values are most significant when reaching a solution. Some believed that, regardless of the agreement, the biological mother should have all rights and custody of the baby because surrogacy was not legal in New...
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...Legalizing Euthanasia: A Practical Approach Theressa Thacker RN Excelsior College Abstract We are all in the process of dying from the day we are born. The prevalence of catastrophic diseases that once killed swiftly such as pneumonia, cholera, and massive heart attacks, have been replaced by chronic and, often, degenerative diseases such as advanced cancers, diabetes, lung disease, and Alzheimer’s, leading to a slow death for most (Gardner, 2012). This places a great financial burden on the Medicare system as well as patient’s families. Atul Gawande (2010) reports that twenty five percent of all Medicare spending is for the five percent of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months, which is of little apparent benefit (p. 3). Even more concerning is the suffering that many patients are forced to endure due to the lack of other options. Patients must have the right to make autonomous decisions regarding the end of their lives. They need to be confident that those decisions will be upheld, even if they conflict with the wishes of their families or physicians. However, patient confidence in knowing that their final wishes will be met is complicated by a lack of education and empowerment for those who face these difficult decisions (Frank & Anselmi, 2011). The purpose of this essay is to discuss the benefits to patient autonomy and the Medicare budget, by the legalization of physician-assisted...
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