Article about Euthenasia from http://www.enotes.com/euthanasia-article
What is Euthanasia?
“Euthanasia” is a broad term for mercy killing—taking the life of a hopelessly ill or injured individual in order to end his or her suffering. Mercy killing represents a serious ethical dilemma. People do not always die well.
Some afflictions cause people to suffer through extreme physical pain in their last days, and euthanasia may seem like a compassionate way of ending this pain.
Other patients may request euthanasia to avoid the weakness and loss of mental faculties that some diseases cause, and many feel these wishes should be respected.
But euthanasia also seems to contradict one of the most basic principles of morality, which is that killing is wrong.
Viewed from a traditional Judeo-Christian point of view, euthanasia is murder and a blatant violation of the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill.”
From a secular perspective, one of the principal purposes of law is to uphold the sanctity of human life.
Euthanasia is so controversial because it pits the plight of suffering, dying individuals against religious beliefs, legal tradition, and, in the case of physician-assisted death, medical ethics.
Changes in the place and way we die
This moral dilemma is not new. The term “euthanasia” is derived from ancient Greek, and means “good death.” But while the debate over mercy killing has ancient origins, many observers believe that it is harder today to achieve a good death than ever before.
Advances in medicine have increased people’s health and life span, but they have also greatly affected the dying process. For example, in the early twentieth century the majority of Americans died at home, usually victims of pneumonia or influenza. Today most people die in the hospital, often from degenerative diseases like cancer that may cause a painful, lingering death.
The Case of Karen Quinlan – passive euthanasia
Most observers trace the modern euthanasia debate back to the court case of Karen Ann Quinlan, and her story is a poignant example of medical technology’s ability to prolong life. In 1975, after consuming alcohol and tranquilizers at a party, Quinlan collapsed into an irreversible coma that left her unable to breathe without a respirator or eat without a feeding tube. Her parents asked that she be removed from the respirator, but her doctors objected. The New Jersey Supreme Court case that followed was the first to bring the issue of euthanasia into the public eye.
In 1976 the court allowed Quinlan’s parents to have the respirator removed. Although Quinlan lived for another nine years (her parents did not want her feeding tube removed), the case set a precedent for a patient’s right to refuse unwanted medical treatment.
The case of Nancy Cruzan – passive euthanasia
In 1990, this right was further expanded in the case of Nancy Cruzan. Cruzan had gone into an irreversible coma in 1983 after a severe car crash, and her parents wanted the machine that was keeping her alive removed. However, in this case the machine consisted of intravenous feeding tubes that provided Cruzan with hydration and nutrition.
Her parents viewed the removal of the machine as the termination of unwanted treatment.
However, the state of Missouri argued that to remove the feeding tubes would be to intentionally kill Cruzan through starvation.
In a controversial vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the provision of artificially delivered food and water is a treatment which patients may legally refuse, even if doing so will result in death.
But that is a question of a patient refusing food and water. Do parents have the right to make that decision if the patient is not capable of doing so?
Active Euthanasia Timothy Quill and Diane.
The cases of Quinlan and Cruzan helped develop a social policy that recognizes that some lifesaving treatments are not always appropriate, and permits the removal of these treatments as a form of “passive” euthanasia. But shortly after the Cruzan case more active forms of euthanasia became the focus of public attention. One of the persons most responsible for this is Timothy E. Quill, a physician who in 1991 described in the New England Journal of Medicine the case of “Diane,” a longtime patient of his who was suffering from acute leukemia. She asked Quill for the means to end her life should she find it intolerable, and, unable to dissuade her, he prescribed sleeping pills, telling her how many were necessary to cure insomnia and how many were necessary to commit suicide. Four months later Diane killed herself.
Quill’s article provoked immediate and heated discussion over the legality of physicians’ assisting in suicide. Quill’s self-proclaimed goal is to improve the care dying people receive rather than to legalize any form of euthanasia. Nevertheless, he became a central figure in a court case that challenged the constitutionality of state bans on assisted suicide— Quill and other right-to-die advocates essentially argued that terminally ill patients have a constitutional right to assisted suicide.
In 1997, however, the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling that states may legislate for or against physician-assisted suicide as they see fit. (Currently, over 35 states have laws against assisted suicide; only Oregon has legalized the practice.)
The case of Jack Kevorkian – who has helped over 130 people to die
Ironically, however, the person most responsible for bringing euthanasia into the public eye is one from whom most right-to-die activists have tried to distance themselves: former pathologist Jack Kevorkian, who has admitted helping over 130 people die since 1990.
Whereas Quill is regarded as a reasoned, thoughtful spokesman for the terminally ill, Kevorkian is seen as a renegade.
Many of the people he has helped to die were not terminally ill, and he did not know them before they requested his assistance in suicide. He holds some bizarre opinions: In his book Prescription: Medicide, Kevorkian advocates experimentation on patients before they die and nonvoluntary euthanasia for anyone whom physicians deem to have an extremely low quality of life.
Many of his views and methods have been condemned by right-to-die leaders, yet Kevorkian is the name people most associate with euthanasia.
Prior to 1998, Kevorkian only assisted in suicides. He rigged so-called suicide machines that allowed patients to self-administer a lethal dose of drugs. However, on November 23, 1998, 60 Minutes aired a videotape of Kevorkian participating in a more active form of euthanasia. For the first time, he administered the fatal injection himself, ending the life of Thomas Youk, a fifty-twoyear- old who suffered from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
On March 26, 1999, a Michigan jury, faced with this videotape evidence, found Kevorkian guilty of murder.
The judge in the case did not allow the defense to present testimony about Youk’s pain and suffering, and emphasized that whether the victim consents is legally irrelevant in murder cases. Kevorkian plans to appeal the verdict.
Kevorkian’s is the latest in a series of contentious euthanasia cases that have challenged and, in some cases, changed Americans’ beliefs about death, mercy, and killing.
Less than three decades ago, many people considered the removal of a comatose patient’s respirator a shocking act of passive euthanasia.
Today, the most divisive euthanasia cases concern physician-assisted suicide and Kevorkian’s direct mercy killing.
The authors in Euthanasia: Opposing Viewpoints debate these increasingly complex topics in the following chapters: Is Euthanasia Ethical? Should Voluntary Euthanasia Be Legalized? Would Legalizing Euthanasia Lead to Involuntary Killing? Should Physicians Assist in Suicide? The viewpoints in this book help shed light on the legal and ethical problems that Americans continue to face in their quest for a “good death.”
Continent Death: Euthanasia in Europe
WESLEY J. SMITH
Self-delusion is rampant in the euthanasia movement. Most proponents recognize that it is inherently dangerous to legalize killing. But they desperately want to believe that they can control the grim reaper. Thus, they continue to peddle the nonsense that "guidelines will protect against abuse" despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.
Too many people think with their hearts instead of their brains. Wanting the world to suit their desires, when faced with hard truths to the contrary, they refuse to face facts they don't want to believe. This common human failing has a name: self-delusion.
Self-delusion is rampant in the euthanasia movement.
Most proponents recognize that it is inherently dangerous to legalize killing. But they desperately want to believe that they can control the grim reaper. Thus, they continue to peddle the nonsense that "guidelines will protect against abuse" despite overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary.
Euthanasia has been around long enough and practiced sufficiently enough for us to detect a pattern. Killing is sold to the public as a last resort justified only in cases where nothing else can be done to alleviate suffering. But once the reaper is allowed through the door, the categories of killable people expand steadily toward the acceptance of death on demand.
The classic example is the Netherlands, where doctors have been allowed to euthanize patients since 1973. Dutch death regulations require that euthanasia be strictly limited to the sickest patients, for whom nothing but extermination will alleviate overwhelming suffering — a concept in Dutch law known as force majeur. But once mercy killing was redefined as being good in a few cases rather than being bad in all circumstances, it didn't take long for the protective guidelines to be viewed widely as impediments to be overcome instead of important protections to be obeyed.
Thus, supposedly ironclad protections against abuse — such as the doctrine of force mejeur and the stipulation that patient give multiple requests for euthanasia — quickly ceased meaningfully to constrain mercy killing. As a consequence, Dutch doctors now legally kill terminally ill people who ask for it, chronically ill people who ask for it, disabled people who ask for it, and depressed people who ask for it.
Euthanasia has also entered the pediatric wards, where eugenic infanticide has become common even though babies cannot ask to be killed. According to a 1997 study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, approximately 8 percent of all Dutch infant deaths result from lethal injections. The babies deemed killable are often disabled and thus are thought not to have a "livable life." The practice has become so common that 45 percent of neonatologists and 31 percent of pediatricians who responded to Lancet surveys had killed babies.
It gets worse: Repeated studies sponsored by the Dutch government have found that doctors kill approximately 1,000 patients each year who have not asked for euthanasia. This is not only a violation of every guideline, but an act that Dutch law considers murder. Nonvoluntary euthanasia has become so common that it even has a name: "Termination without request or consent."
Despite this carnage, Dutch doctors are very rarely prosecuted for such crimes, and the few that are brought to court are usually exonerated. Moreover, even if a doctor is found guilty, he or she is almost never punished in any meaningful way, nor does the murderer face discipline by the Dutch Medical Society. For example, in 2001, a doctor was convicted of murdering an 84-year-old patient who had not asked to be killed. Prosecutors demanded a nine-month suspended probation (!), yet even this brush- it can't even be called a slap- on-the-wrist was rejected by the trial judge who refused to impose any punishment. Not to worry. The appellate court decided to get tough: It imposed a one-week suspended sentence on the doctor for murder.
Even such praising with faint damnation isn't enough for the Dutch Medical Association. As a result of this and the handful of other non-punished murder convictions of doctors who engaged in termination without request or consent, the organization is lobbying to legalize non-voluntary euthanasia. Along these same lines — and demonstrating that the culture of death recognizes no limits -- the day after the Dutch formally legalized euthanasia, the country's minister of health advocated the provision of suicide pills to the elderly who do not qualify for killing under Dutch law.
Lest we think the Dutch experience is a fluke, let us now turn our attention to Belgium. Only one year ago the Belgians legalized Dutch-style euthanasia under "strict" guidelines. As with the Netherlands, once unfettered, the euthanasia culture quickly began to swallow Belgium whole. Moreover, the slide down the slope has occurred at a greatly accelerated pace. It took decades for the Dutch euthanasia to reach the current morass. But Belgian euthanasia went off the rails from day one: The very first day there was a reported killing of a man with multiple sclerosis — which violated the legal guidelines (not that anything was done about it). Moreover, while 203 people were officially recognized as having been euthanized in Belgium during the first year of legal practice, most euthanasia deaths were not reported (a violation of the law). The actual toll is probably closer to 1,000.
And Belgian euthanasia advocates have already begun agitating to expand the categories of killable people. A just-completed forum attended by hundreds of Belgian doctors and euthanasia enthusiasts advocated that minors be allowed to request euthanasia, as well as people with degenerative conditions, such as Alzheimer's, who are not imminently dying. Not only that, but the chairman of the conference wants to force doctors to participate in killing patients, even if they are morally opposed. If he gets his way, the law will soon require doctors who oppose euthanasia to refer patients who want to be killed to a colleague willing to do the deed. So much for choice.
The Swiss have also unleashed the culture of death into their midst. Rather than authorizing doctors to commit euthanasia, however, Swiss law instead permits private suicide facilitation. As a result, Switzerland has become a destination for "suicide tourists" who travel there not to ski, but to receive a poison cocktail.
A private group that goes by the name "Dignitas" facilitates most Swiss assisted suicides. Its founder, lawyer Ludwig Minelli, recently told the Swiss press that he will not restrict Dignitas's dark work to providing services to the dying. Indeed, the report said Minelli believes that "severe depression can be irreversible and that he is justified" in helping "the mentally ill" to die.
Along these lines, a Swiss doctor is being investigated for possible prosecution for the double suicide of French twins with schizophrenia. That may sound like a serious effort to crack down on abuse, but remember, once euthanasia is legitimized, such talk is often cheap. If the Dutch experience is any indication, even if the suicide doctor is convicted, he will not be meaningfully punished.
Despite this history, euthanasia advocates here and abroad still cling irrationally to the hubristic and foolish notion that they are competent to administer death. They remind one of Dr. Frankenstein, who, in the name of benefiting humankind, unleashed a terrible monster.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Wesley J. Smith. "Continent Death: Euthanasia in Europe." National Review (December 23, 2004).
Reprinted with permission of the National Review.
Should Euthanasia be considered a justly end to human discomfort or amoral criminal act? One has to think What are pros and cons of committing Euthanasia? Should elderly people in pain and discomfort be given the right by civilized society to die by their own will? This is a hot area of debate where many will argue that it is wrong but others will view it as putting an end to an individuals suffering. It is seen in the United states as assisted suicide or mercy killing and is strictly forbidden. Normally, euthanasia can be given to an individual who no longer longs to live by a deadly vaccination or using the similar drugs as those on death chain are carried out. As the image shows Euthanasia is murder and many see it as morally wrong.