NOTE: Free essay sample provided on this page should be used for references or sample purposes only. The sample essay is available to anyone, so any direct quoting without mentioning the source will be considered plagiarism by schools, colleges and universities that use plagiarism detection software. To get a completely brand-new, plagiarism-free essay, please use our essay writing service.
One click instant price quote
Two hundred years ago, to question the absolute worth of human life was an unforgivable offense. Individuals who attempted to suicide were often punished in courts, and even sent to work camps. Those who were successful were often buried with stakes in their hearts, and the state confiscated their property rather than dispersing it to their relatives. If taking ones own life were so serious, asking a doctor to help one commit suicide would have been unthinkable.
Although our society is certainly more liberal today, physician assisted suicide remains a perplexing question, both legally and morally. In this paper, I will argue for the moral permissibility of euthanasia. First, I will deal with the moral permissibility of assisted suicide as a principle, and then I shall explore the distinction between active and passive euthanasia. Finally, I will conclude with a short discussion of the legality of assisted suicide.
In the interests of brevity, I shall consider voluntary euthanasia only for individuals who are terminally ill and suffering from unmanageable pain. All arguments will be evaluated from a utilitarian and de ontological perspective. The first argument for euthanasia is a utilitarian one. Actions, according to the utilitarian John Stuart Mill, are right as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce pain or the reverse of happiness. If we were to apply a hedonistic calculus to the case of a terminally ill patient suffering from severe, untreatable pain, we would see that the happiness is maximized and pain minimized by euthanasia. The sort of pain caused by an advanced, terminal illness would clearly score a negative value, perhaps a negative seven.
The level of pain and the progression of the disease would also render the person unable to enjoy the activities that made his life pleasurable, so there could be no higher intellectual or emotional pleasures to balance the physical pain. At best, the person continues to suffer at the negative seven; if his illness has not reached its climax, his suffering may increase. In contrast, his death will create a value of zero, and thus misery is reduced. Moreover, his family and friends will be spared the pain of watching him suffer through a prolonged illness. Hospital space and resources will be free for patients with more treatable conditions. (Lest such concerns sound callous, it is important to recognize that utilitarianism requires us to evaluate all possible effects and how they would contribute to or detract from everyones happiness. ) Furthermore, in the case of voluntary euthanasia, traditional utilitarian justifications against killing do not apply. As Singer rightfully points out, the reason that randomly killing innocent people is morally wrong for a rule utilitarian is that people would suffer considerable anxiety from knowing that their life could be terminated at any point in time.
Euthanasia, however, is not an arbitrary action but one, which occurs only at the request of a suffering patient. Thus, no one would live in fear that their lives would be taken from them. Finally, to satisfactorily evaluate assisted suicide from a utilitarian perspective, one must consider the objection that perhaps a sudden cure for an individuals illness could be discovered. That this possibility does indeed exist is not a viable reason for dismissing euthanasia.
Firstly, Mill acknowledges that we cannot always know with certainty the outcome of our actions, and thus we must instead look at the probability of each potential outcome. Medical science, today, is a detailed, painstaking process, which is not given to the discovery of unexpected cures. Specialists could reasonably know when a cure was in development and when a promising new drug would arrive on the market. That the cure for one particular persons particular illness would be discovered within the few additional months, which he would have lived, is unlikely. Even if it were, this cure would probably not be available to him because it would have to undergo extensive testing by government regulators and because it probably would not work on an extremely advanced case. Because the likelihood of a sudden cure is so low, we ought not adopt a rule requiring us to leave individuals suffering for needless days, weeks, or months.
Their pain will far outweigh the pleasure of the handful of individuals who might benefit from such unexpected medicines. A final objection comes from the argument that utility is flawed as a theory. Life, opponents to euthanasia argue, has absolute and intrinsic worth and therefore it cannot be terminated in any circumstance or for any reason. Empirical evidence, however, suggests that we are unprepared for such an absolutist doctrine. Our society and all others acknowledge that certain values are higher than human life. For instance, we execute prisoners who could likely be safely contained in prisons because we believe that achieving justice is more important than preserving human life.
Women who are in danger of being raped and thus kill their assailant are immune from murder charges; we believe that protecting their rights to liberty and sexual inviolability takes precedence over another's right to life. When the government sends soldiers to battle, it knows that at least some of them will die, and thus, it implicitly suggests that freedom and national security are more important than the soldiers lives. Even if we do not accept the forgoing argument, the de ontological categorical imperative supports euthanasia by arguing that persons with absolute worth are due more than a life filled with agony. If, as James Rachel's envisions, you were given the choice between dying quietly and without pain, at the age of eighty, from a fatal injection, or dying at the age of eighty plus a few days of an affliction so painful that for those few days before death you would be reduced to howling like a dog, (Bonevac, 460) you probably would not universally will the latter choice. Furthermore, as Roger Sullivan explains according to Kant, our moral reason recognizes in an objective and disinterested way that we are not only persons having intrinsic worth but also finite beings with needs to be met, and it insists on the strict right of all human beings not only to strive for but to attain that h...
Free research essays on topics related to: de ontological, human life, terminally ill, voluntary euthanasia, assisted suicide
Research essay sample on Assisted Suicide Voluntary Euthanasia
