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Example research essay topic: Terminally Ill Patients Death With Dignity - 1,684 words

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Euthanasia comes from a Greek term good death. However, the word has gained a much more complicated meaning in the recent times. Euthanasia is a rationally considered plan to end a life because of pain and suffering due to a terminal illness. The controversy surrounding euthanasia and the arguments supporting or protesting the practice have raised serious concern and problems in the medical field for years, as well as society, and the world as a whole.

We can see through history that the Greeks and the Romans believed in the importance of a death with dignity that they achieved by using poisons. In the second and third centuries AD, the Christian spirit opposed the active or passive ending of life for anyone in order to gain relief. Nevertheless, during the Renaissance, people stopped to criticize suicide. The modern euthanasia movement began in England in 1935, when G.

B. Shaw and H. G. Wells started a Voluntary Euthanasia Society that later became known by the name Exit.

In the United States, Charles Potter began the movement that was called Society for the Right to Die. Finally, in the early 1970 s, other voluntary euthanasia societies were formed in the Netherlands and in Australia. There are two types of euthanasia: passive euthanasia and voluntary active euthanasia. Passive euthanasia is simply ending artificial life support in order to prolong life. By some, it is considered good medical practice, and is usually performed on terminally ill patients. Terminally ill patients are those who cannot continue to live without medical technology assisting them, will never be conscious, coherent, due to brain damage, or other causes, ever again.

There are three ways that this procedure is performed. One is a living will. This is where a person of sound mind and body prepares a legal document, usually before they fall ill, saying that they do not want any extraordinary life saving techniques performed during cardiac failure. The second is where a person hands over all their medical decisions to a person to whom they have discussed all their wishes about how far they wish the doctor to go before stopping medical treatment.

The final way is usually the most difficult. It is when a patient has lost conciseness and will never regain it. Then it is up to the family if they want further medical treatment or wish to let nature take its course. Most feel the living will is the best course of action due to the fact it clearly states patients wishes in a legally binding document. Euthanasia has become an extremely volatile issue in our society. The question of ethical and legal perspectives hammers patients and their doctors.

Within the topic of euthanasia, another conflict arises over the most humane way to end ones suffering: passive or active euthanasia. By society's present standards, passive euthanasia is considered more humane than active euthanasia because it is letting nature take its course. However, voluntary active euthanasia can be more humane for the terminally ill if stipulations and safeguards are made in the implementation of its use. There was bill was laid before the voters on whether active euthanasia should be allowed within the state of Washington. Although rejected by little more than 20 % most argue it was vague and guidelines were too moderate.

Euthanasia was and continues to be confused with assisted suicide, a similar event with a much different meaning. Assisted suicide consists of a person administering a drug in order to help another in committing suicide. Passive euthanasia occurs when a person is in a persistent vegetative state. Life support would be removed, or all medical procedures would be stopped. Active euthanasia happens when death is caused through a direct action. In most cases, a doctor is giving painkillers to a patient in doses strong enough to relieve the pain.

This procedure will slow the respiration and hasten the patients death. This is always frowned upon by most of the medical profession, but is commonly overlooked. Most doctors feel it was the only way to stop the patients chronic pain and a chance they felt needed to be taken. The most well known person to perform assisted-suicide would be Dr. Jack Kevorkian. There are well-documented situations where Dr.

Kevorkian has performed assisted suicides with a machine he had created in his spare time. Due to his actions, the debate over doctor-assisted euthanasia has increased. The debate is whether the doctor has enough medical information to determine properly that the patient is truly suffering and is terminally ill. Dr.

Kevorkian has faced a jury numerous times but has never been found guilty. Due to the vague laws on assisted-suicide, many states have passed laws to forbid such actions based on the actions of this man. He maintains that he will help any terminally ill patient who wishes to put an end to their pain and suffering. Most people on both sides of the debate disagree with Dr. Kevorkian's actions. Most feel he acts in haste.

None of his assisted suicide victims was his patient. He did not know their medical or mental history. Most of his victims were elderly and were known to fear growing old and no longer being able to care for themselves. The younger patients of his were known to suffer from extreme cases of depression and therefore could not rationally make their own decision on whether or not continue living.

To understand doctors position on the subject, we must first underline that the Hippocratic Oath that is made from the majority of the doctors around the world, and has lead and still leads their consciences for centuries, is outright, and starkly prohibitive to any act or attempt of euthanasia. It is stated, I will neither give a deadly drug to anyone, if asked for, nor will I make suggestion to this effect (Drakopoulos, p. 32). According to American doctor Leon R. Kass (p. 136), killing patients even those who ask for death violates the inner meaning of the art of healing. Euthanasia constitutes a moral issue that from time to time comes into view mainly from its supporters who, contrarily to more traditional opinions, believe that the man is the master of his life and that nobody else can force him to stay alive, especially when his life has become unbearable from the illness and the pain. This dilemma does not have an easy solution.

My opinion is that the ending of the life should not be looked at as just a demonstration of a humanistic attitude that lacks spiritual consideration for the man, but as a natural situation that should be respected and not abused. According to a 1992 manual produced by the Washington Medical Association Pain Management and Care of the Terminal Patient, "adequate interventions exist to control pain in 90 to 99 % of patients. " Some believe that patients are giving up too soon, and are not trying to cope with the pain or taking measures to ease the pain; they are just looking for an easy way out, which in this case is euthanasia. They fear that if euthanasia is legalized that a human life would mean less. Fear that doctors will have more power in which they could kill their patient without their permission.

Many fear that mentally and physically disabled people will not receive the same treatment as everyone else and that their lives would mean less than a healthy person. They believe that mentally sick, physically disabled, and old will be killed without their permission. That is where the debate over which form is acceptable. Those in favor of euthanasia, think that it should be legal and voluntary. This suggests that the patient requesting the service is capable of making this decision based on the severity of their illness. Most proponents believe that any form of active euthanasia should only be restricted to those who are terminally ill and in extreme pain, and only carried out by a health professional.

Proponents of euthanasia argue that mercy killing is necessary because patients, particularly those with terminal illness, experience uncontrollable pain. They argue that the only way to alleviate the pain is to eliminate the patient. Nevertheless, we should not forget that in vital and crucial moments in lives, people do not easily loose their hope for a miracle, which in some cases happens. Looking through the moral aspects of euthanasia, we can divide them in two points of view: of the euthanized (patient) and his environment, and of the responsible doctor. Starting with the moral analysis of the patient who desires to go through euthanasia, we could say that his or her wish has some logical arguments. This wish, according to G.

M. Burnell (p. 251), comes from the need of the patient to avoid or end the unbearable pain during a terminal illness, to have a better quality of life, or to prevent unnecessary financial burden on the family. However, some equally logical questions emerge. Do the people who are actually contemplating euthanasia for themselves generally put their requests in these terms?

On the other hand, are they not rather looking for a way to end their troubles and pains? Is it really dignified to seek to escape from troubles to oneself? Is there, to repeat, not more dignity in courage than in its absence? Euthanasia for ones own dignity is, at best, paradoxical, even self-contradictory.

Is it possible for a person to honor himself by suicide? Even if dignity were to consist solely in autonomy, is it not an embarrassment to claim that autonomy reaches its zenith precisely as it disappears? Leon R. Kass (p. 139) in his article about death with dignity says, The deaths we most admire are those of people who, knowing that they are dying, face the fact frontally and act accordingly. They set their affairs in order; they arrange what could be final meetings with their loved ones, and yet, with strength of soul and a small reservoir of hope, they continue to live and work and love as much as they can for as long as they can.


Free research essays on topics related to: continue to live, terminally ill patients, death with dignity, passive euthanasia, pain and suffering

Research essay sample on Terminally Ill Patients Death With Dignity

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