Life-and death questions are serious, complex, and often expensive. One of the few topics that are problematic or controversial is the physician-assisted suicide and the question that, “Should it be or should not be a legal option for terminally ill patients? ” Cases of physician-assisted suicide often make headlines. These are usually cases in which distraught relatives, unable to bear the suffering of their loved ones (or their own suffering), kill the patient outright.
Sometimes these people are charged with murder, and, if the case comes to trial, the defendant is most often acquitted or put on probation, for injuries are reluctant to convict a person acting out what appear to be benevolent motives. As dramatic as these cases may be, they are relatively unproblematic in a moral sense. No moral philosopher has constructed a justification for these acts of violence, as understandable as they may be on psychological grounds. What is Euthanasia
The majority of cases in which euthanasia is raised as a possibility are among the most difficult ethical issues to resolve, for they involve the conflict between a physician’s duty to preserve life and the burden on the patient and the family that is created by fulfilling that duty. One common distinction is between active euthanasia (that is, some positive act such as administering a lethal injection) and passive euthanasia (that is an inaction such as deciding not to administer antibiotics when the patient has a severe infection).
Another common distinction is between voluntary euthanasia (that is, the patient is unable to consent, perhaps because he or she is in a coma) (Kubler-Ross, 2006). At one time euthanasia referred to having a good death, an easy time of dying, or having the painful, traumatic event of death go as well as possible. In the past generation or so the term euthanasia has taken on a different meaning. When we speak of euthanasia today we generally refer to a direct intervention which causes a sick or dying person’s death.
This action can be performed by the dying themselves, by family members or friends, or by health care professionals. Such actions as the taking of lethal amounts of medication, the administration of poisonous gases, pills or intravenous solutions, or overt killing acts such as suffocating and shooting are the most frequent ways of effecting euthanasia. A common misconception about euthanasia is that there is not much difference between allowing a person to die and ending the person’s life by overt action.
This misconception reveals faulty thinking because in the contemporary context, what makes euthanasia euthanasia is the fact of a direct positive intervention, not the fact that the person has died. In fact, precise speech would require usage of the term “direct, positive euthanasia,” qualified by the adjective “active” or “passive. ” “Active” would convey the fact that death was brought about by the patient’s own action, while “passive” conveys the idea that another person performs the deed which causes the death. (When a person ends his own life by some overt action, he commits suicide.
It can happen that a person cannot cause his death because of paralysis or some other factor. In such a case he might ask someone else to end his life for him; he would want to be euthanized but would be unable to effect this result, putting his case in the category direct, positive euthanasia in which the subject passively receives the death-causing deed. The person who causes the death would not want to be identified as a “murderer” but, rather, as a helper. Should the movement to legalize euthanasia succeed, society would accommodate this wish (Rachels, 2005).