Euthanasia Essay, Research Paper

Euthanasia

Euthanasia is not only a topic in the United States. It has become a worldwide issue. This topic is so widely talked about because it deals with the death rights of people in the nation and beyond. Older People who are suffering from a terminal illness, dying children, and people in a comatose or vegetative state should have euthanasia as a possible option of treatment.

An elderly woman suffering from cancer knows that there isn?t much that a doctor can do after her illness progresses past a certain stage. The woman, in sound mind, decides she wants to end her suffering and the pain that her family endures watching her life slowly slips away. She asks her attending physician about a drug that will put her to her final slumber. When she does this she is asking for the doctor to perform an act of euthanasia. Lots of things make the elderly want to end their lives in this way. One of the most common is pain. Terminally ill patients can go through a lot of pain. Some times the medicine that prolongs their life puts them through more pain than the disease. The patient fells that they shouldn?t have to go through the unnecessary pain if they don?t want to. When this is the situation euthanasia is a very promising conclusion. Also this shows that the person requesting this procedure has come to grips with death and just wants to die peacefully.

Many people around the world believe that each person should have the right to decide whether it would be best for them to continue on in life or to terminate it in certain situations. In several cases I believe that this should apply. In Michigan seventy percent of pharmacists favored the legalization of euthanasia. Euthanasia is still illegal in most parts of this country and the world. That part can be changed easily. The main issue with people as a whole is that it is thought to be immoral. Aiding someone in taking his or her own life is interpreted as playing god. Our society feels that people should not be able to choose when they die. They feel that we shouldn?t die until god takes us and not a lethal drug. This is the way it is expressed in religion and the way society thinks it should always be.

Children suffering from painful diseases such as leukemia and others should also have the right to call upon euthanasia as an option. After a certain age a child can understand certain things. They know when they are seriously sick and they can also comprehend what it means to be terminal. Once a child gets to the ? point of no return ? they have a certain state of mind and that is that they just want to be comfortable and pain free. The Dutch government has written a proposed euthanasia legislation with a ? child?s paragraph.? This paragraph gave children ages twelve to sixteen years of age the right to choose euthanasia with out the consent of the parents as an alternative to pain and suffering. After liberating over this paragraph the government decided to throw it out. This wasn?t because they felt that children shouldn?t have the right, in fact they thought it was a given. Physicians found that parents usually agreed with the wishes of the children so they just saw no need to include this paragraph. The whole proposal is still waiting to be voted on. Until it is voted on active euthanasia is illegal unless it is performed following certain procedures. This shows that euthanasia is becoming an important part of medicine and a wide spread practice.

The families of comatose victims or people who are in a prolonged vegetative state should be able to decide if their loved one is to stay on any type of life support or not. Only the family would know what that person would want to do in that situation. The doctors can?t make a judgement on if the patient in question would wish to do. ?Wife Allowed to let Comatose Man Die? This was a headline in a Virginia newspaper in 1998. A woman went to court to get legal consent to remove her husbands feeding tube. Just three years earlier he was in an accident and ruptured his aorta. This deprived his brain of oxygen and left him in a coma. He was in a persistent vegetative state for those three years until his wife made the decision to remove the tube. This was considered to be euthanasia. The judge ruled in favor of the wife and the tube was removed. She expressed that it wasn?t only her decision. Her husband told her that he wouldn?t ever want to live in that state so she felt that she was carrying out his wishes.