Imagine, you are late in age and you have been ill for a very long time. You spend the majority of your time in pain. Your doctors are pretty sure you’re not going to make it much longer and to help you during your end of life transition; they decide it is best to discuss terminal sedation with you. They explain sedation will keep you sleep and you will no longer feel the pain that has been plaguing your existence for… you forget how many years. In this process you will eventually die therefore removing both your life and your pain. What do you chose…pain or permanent sleep?
Now imagine you are the public and you have recently run across an article comparing terminal sedation, palliative sedation (sedation for purposes of surgery, burn victims, etc), and euthanasia. You sit and wonder as a younger individual, if this type of sedation is like putting down a sick dog. Something that we, the public, are taught is hard heartbreaking but often necessary. You remember the doctors on the news from Lousiana and how they put down the four terminal patients during Hurricane Katrina and your heart breaks. You’re uneasy with the idea of doctors using sedatives to take lives, but you’re even more unsettled by the questioning in your mind. What would you chose if it was you…life in pain or for someone to put you to sleep? What circumstances would cause you to choose to end your life with medical assistance?
Euthanasia is the act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment. The Greeks called it a “good death” and every culture in the world has their own versions of it. It is also called painless death or mercy killings.
It made me wonder if this act was necessarily wrong, if it was the choice of the individual versus the choice of the doctors or family members. When we turn off life support of brain dead individuals, is it euthanasia? When we end the life of a death row inmate by lethal injection, is it euthanasia? Is signing a DNR (Do not resuscitate) order in a hospital before a surgery, is it euthanasia if they follow it?
I don’t know. I don’t even understand how as a society we could make that decision. I know that if we make it completely illegal then we could be impeded on an individual’s right to have a life of their choosing or death of their choosing. Back in the day, death row inmates were allowed to choose how they were going to die. Why can't old people?
What do you think? Is the practice of terminal sedation by doctors really euthanasia and do you think it should be outlawed?
You have a good point but I really don't have any idea which I would choose. It would be better not to suffer all the pain, but then again it would in a way be almost like the doctor is playing god. I don't believe it should be outlawed but I am not really sure about it.
I am here to inform and help:
http://www.progressiveu.org/032913-lupus-uncureable-wait-what
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You could also say that when a person dies (flatlines), reviving them is playing god, or that letting them live through artificial means- life support- is playing god.
It's a personal decision. Who are we to be able to say that people have no option but to suffer and have a very low quality of life?
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
I understand what you are saying I didn't mean to put it like that. I just ment they could decide between life and death. I agree though that it should be the person's choice. I am just not sure whether I am for it or against it.
I am here to inform and help:
http://www.progressiveu.org/032913-lupus-uncureable-wait-what
Love comments? I do too!
I think it should be allowed at the person's discretion, not the doctors. Possibly the family since the family decides if their already under. It is the person's choice ultimately, and religions and whatnot shouldn't interfere.
I'm not sure...
I don't like the idea of suicide, but I don't like the idea of suffering either. Oh dear...what to choose....
What a hard question to ask.
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All of this is a personal decision. It should be up to an individual.
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
I think these are all different points though. Signing a DNR is saying that a person doesn't want to be put on life support if something happens. This can mean many different things. If the brain is not dead, there is always a slight chance of coming back. Some people sign these because they don't want to deal with the possibility of waking up paralyzed, with brain damage, or being a burden on family members. Not to mention the great cost of keeping a person on life support in the back of their minds as they sign the paper. Religion is also an aspect. Some believe giving up on any life is wrong, others believe that going to that extent is wrong.
Once a person is brain dead, there is no coming back. Brain dead is dead, and only a physical life is there. So, aside from a discussion of donating organs and tissues, I feel keeping a physical body alive in its brain dead state is selfish.
Mercy killing, euthanasia, assisted-suicide... whatever you want to call it, is a touchy subject. In my opinion, if someone is in that much pain and has that low of a quality of life, and feels that hopeless, it's wrong not to allow them to make this decision. I think the people that are against it, outside of religious reasons, have never been through a traumatic health issue in their own lives and have no idea what that lack of control in your life feels like. To better explain my views, I found this, part of a letter from Dr Jack Kevorkian to Chief Justice Rehnquist:
September 15, 2000
Hon. William Hubbs Rehnquist
Chief Justice
Supreme Court of the United States
Washington, D.C.
Sir:
The issue of medical euthanasia, or physician aid in dying, is now of prime importance in the United States and several other countries. Clarification of its relation to rights and laws is urgently needed. Is the procedure to be governed by a capricious farrago of variegated state laws, or is it to be accorded the exalted status of a uniform, all-pervasive constitutional sanction?...
Medical art and science are entirely secular and serve a dual purpose: to lengthen life and to preserve or enhance its quality. Theoretically both aims are equally important, but arbitrary (and mainly sectarian) bias fostered an obsession to prolong life, no matter how inimical to its quality. The benefits of medicine permit its practitioners to perform acts that ordinarily are crimes. Thus we condone and even laud surgical mutilation...as well as the occasionally nearly lethal poisoning of chemotherapy. The resultant quality of life is always subordinate to the chief aim of prolonging it. Why shouldn't the ranking sometimes be reversed? Why should we not just as readily condone and laud the chief aim of expunging—humanely, quickly, and with certainty—an intolerably low quality of individual life through a medical act ordinarily deemed to be homicide?
The mere availability of the euthanasia option often improves the quality of, and even prolongs, the lives of many terminal or incurably suffering patients. Having such a choice seems to dissipate the panic of helplessness by assuring a modicum of personal control. Consequently the vast majority of patients go on to die "naturally" and with few complaints despite continued excruciating suffering. This greatly eases the burden of families and caretakers. My own extensive experience and that of physicians in the Netherlands, Australia (where a corroborative study is planned), and Oregon confirm this finding. Furthermore, there is no doubt that unfettered access to this option coupled with unencumbered medical consultation will dramatically improve the quality of life and drastically reduce the appalling suicide rate among the lonely, isolated elderly.
That medical euthanasia is a just and honorable procedure becomes obvious from its comparison with the justifiable homicide of judicial execution by lethal injection. The first major difference is in the intent. A physician's only aim is to end the subject's suffering (positive result) which unfortunately entails death (negative result), balancing out to neutral at best. The executioner's only aim is the subject's death (totally negative) in behalf of society's additional aims of inflicting punishment, extracting retribution, or coercing penitence, all of which is totally nullified by the death (negative); and the executioner's role in wreaking society's vengeance makes the balance here abysmally negative....
Medical euthanasia was honorable and widely practiced in ancient Hippocratic Greece but later criminalized by the Church. The Renaissance philosopher-scientist Francis Bacon advocated that "the medical profession should be permitted to ease and quicken death where the end would be otherwise only delayed for a few days and at the cost of great pain." In seventeenth-century England Sir Edward Coke, a distinguished lawyer and judge, dismissed charges against a physician who openly performed euthanasia. It was Coke's dictum that "how long soever it hath continued, if it be against reason, it is of no force in law." Accordingly, the long-continued criminalization of euthanasia is of no force because it is flagrantly against reason.
Almost two centuries later Thomas Jefferson advocated the use of a drug to end the terminal suffering from "the inveterate cancer." In 1910 Mark Twain asked his physician to end his suffering from heart disease. Dr. Sigmund Freud's terminal agony, and also in 1936 that of England's King George V, ended with injections by their personal physicians, both vociferous advocates of the practice. The late distinguished American physician and author Dr. Walter Alvarez several decades ago published his strong endorsement of medical euthanasia. Today more than half of all American physicians and an overwhelming majority of the public favor decriminalization of the practice, and a significant number of physicians admit to performing it furtively. The state of Oregon has permitted a limited form of aid in dying through ill-advised, overly restrictive legislation. It appears that the state of Maine may soon do the same. These state laws prohibit the most humane and preferable method of lethal injection.
The Constitutional Court in the predominantly Catholic nation Colombia in 1997 declared simply and correctly that access to medical euthanasia is a right of the people. The Netherlands now is in the process of formally decriminalizing it after two or more decades of having permitted the practice within carefully set guidelines. It is also allowed in Switzerland, Germany, and Uruguay, and may soon be legalized in Catholic Belgium and France, and in Japan. One must wonder why the English-speaking countries lag in this humanitarian trend.
All physicians will not want or, by temperament, be able to perform euthanasia. For them and for patients alike it's a mat-ter of free choice based on personal belief, faith, or philosophy of life. The service should be a kind of medical specialty staffed by experienced and competent practitioners to whom reticent colleagues may refer inquiries. Because medical guidelines change frequently as a result of research and clinical experience, such procedural details cannot be dictated by law.
The Colombian High Court's action is exemplary. For the sake of unnecessarily suffering humanity I respectfully implore your High Court to exercise its prerogative under the supreme authority of the Ninth Amendment by validating as constitutionally protected the choice of suffering patients to request medical euthanasia and the choice of physicians to assess all aspects of that request and to honor it according to stringent guidelines. This right is as fundamental as that of life or liberty, and is certainly worthy of being the first right officially empowered through the Ninth Amendment. Concurrently it is essential that a commission of highly respected physicians be impaneled to establish the guidelines.
As a secular profession medicine is relevant to the full spectrum of human existence from conception through death. Any arbitrary legal constriction of that relevance is irrational, cruel, and barbaric. As guardians of human rights, you and your colleagues have the authority, opportunity, and obligation to rid society of this lingering medieval malady by using the Ninth Amendment to guarantee this most precious and humane right of choice for all Americans.
Sincerely and respectfully,
Jack Kevorkian, MD
Egeler Correctional Facility
Jackson, Michigan
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
is WOW! He made some good points, but at the same time evokes more questions.
Outside of the religious defense, who are we to say person doesn't have the choice? We're talking about adults, most had been barely living for decades, not enjoying what their life was offering- pain and suffering. Kevorkian didn't just run some clinic where terminally ill patients walked in the door and said, "I want to die today." People supporting right to die with dignity legislation are emphatically against euthanasia of mentally ill people. The only candidates have been competent adults who are chronic or terminally ill.
Just because we might not do it, I don't think we have the right to tell someone they have to suffer.
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
I would choose pain. In my own opinion i feel that the doctor would sort of be aiding you in your death. Maybe to us it may not be considered murder-but how does God see it? I would much rather take the pain. I would rather live life gritting my teeth everyday knowing that one day -when its my turn to go- i will no longer be able to feel pain and depression. Heaven awaits every one, and i think living life to the fullest is the key to unlocking heaven's most stunning factors.
-x-Rose-x-
I made up my mind when I was about 12 that I had no interest in life under certain circumstances. I suppose that this decision was partly influenced by my preferred route to school which included a short-cut through the yard of a nursing home. Through the windows you could often see the listess residents drooling and catatonic. It had a profound effect on me.
I've made it very clear to everyone close to me that I don't have any interest in being a vegetable or even in a more sentinent type if it is of a severely degraded quality. They all have instructions to pull the plug or avoid heroic measures. But more importantly than telling people is to write a living will because in most if not all states it carries quite a bit of legal force about your wishes.
Even young people should have a living will. Everybody is about one car accident away from being a rutebega.