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Many people in North America die what may be called a bad death, a death in which a person endures unnecessary pain to live a few extra days. More often than not patients die in pain, their desires concerning treatment ignored, after having spent ten or more days in the intensive care unit. Why should these patients be forced to live in pain? Why should they not be given the option to die? This option is called euthanasia, which in Greek means good death. People should not be obligated to live if they believe that death would be preferable to their suffering; they should be given the choice of euthanasia.
Most people who claim to be against euthanasia do not understand what it is. It used to be called mercy killing and perhaps that is easier to understand. It is mercifully giving a person who is terminally ill, and feels his or her life in not worth living because of intractable pain, loss of dignity or loss of capability, the option of being assisted in dying. It is not whether a physician or another person should be able to take the initiative to kill a patient because the patient must take the initiative. It is not whether a person should be allowed to commit suicide, because in most courts suicide is legal. It is not whether death squads should periodically visit hospitals in order to kill off patients not contributing anything to society, because this image is only used to scare people.
Euthanasia is the act or practice of painlessly putting to death a person who is suffering from a painful and incurable disease or an incapacitating physical disorder. There are two methods of euthanasia, active and passive. Passive euthanasia is the cessation of treatment designed to sustain life that can no longer sustain itself. Examples of passive euthanasia are taking a person off of a ventilator or removing feeding tubes. Active euthanasia is causing the death of a person through a direct action.
An example of this would be administering an injection to kill a patient. Both active and passive euthanasia help a person to end their suffering. Our current laws allow for more humane treatment of animals than for human beings. Our beloved family pet was put to sleep last spring.
The veterinarian told us that she was suffering and there was nothing he could do to alleviate that suffering. She would never be able to run and play again. She would continue to breath for a while but each breath would be labored and painful. He told us that if we loved her we would let her die an easy and painless death brought about by a lethal injection.
We trusted him and held her in our arms as she painlessly fell asleep for the last time. My grandfather's death of lung cancer is in sharp contrast to the death of our dog. He could not eat and shrunk to a shadow of his previous self. He begged to die when the pain got so bad he could not stand it. There was no hope that he would ever get better and he knew that. Unlike my dog, he was forced to wait for the disease to take his life.
His doctors were not allowed to intervene and bring his suffering to an end. Why is it considered humane to end the suffering of a dog but inhumane to do the same for a human being? Many people are against euthanasia because they believe that it is cruel. These people are ignorant because euthanasia is anything but cruel.
It is cruel to force someone to endure pain that they know will only end when they die and to give them no choice as to when that death may occur. People should be given assistance in dying if that is what they ask. Passive Euthanasia is an option given to people through living wills. Through having a living will people can decide what treatments that would and would not like to use in order to prolong their life.
A person may appoint someone else to make these decisions if they are not in a state of mind to make them in their living will. For example a person can say in their living will that they would not like to be fed through tubes if it comes to that to prolong their life, that person will then die of starvation. So why then can a person lie and wait to die but they cannot take an injection that will stop the from living in pain. Another reason that people are opposed to euthanasia is because a family member feels as if they are doing wrong by supporting someone they love in euthanasia. But, in actuality, they are showing their loved one that they care for them and do not want to see them suffer any longer than necessary. In the case of a living will some family member are given the position of making these difficult decisions.
This family has the duty of deciding what is best for their family member and can help to end his suffering. The family member is helping the loved one in making a difficult decision, which will stop their suffering. Euthanasia is often compared to suicide. It is, in some cases, assisted suicide. Suicide is legal in most jurisdictions. If it is legal for a person to take their own life, why should it be illegal for a doctor to assist them?
If suicide is legal, euthanasia should also be legal. Another argument against euthanasia is that it is not natural. That argument could be made in the case of active euthanasia where an action is required to bring about death. Passive euthanasia, which is legal through a living will, is the suspension of unnatural means of supporting life. A person has the right to use unnatural ways to keep them alive but he can not choose to die by unnatural means through active euthanasia.
A person should be offered these ways to prolong his life but at the same time he should be offered ways to quickly and painlessly end his suffering. Euthanasia, which is defined as painless death, should be an option available to human beings, just as it is available to the animals we love. In the case of animals someone must make the choice for them and that should certainly never be the case with human beings. The person must make this ultimate decision with his family's support.
Most people will not choose to be assisted in dying, but it should be their choice to make. It should not be mandatory for people to live in pain. Every human being should be able to choose to die painlessly and in a state of dignity.
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Research essay sample on Active And Passive Passive Euthanasia
