Killing American Society

        American society is enforced and influenced by legal ethics, which are “principles of conduct that members of the profession are expected to observe in the practice of law” says Encyclopedia Britannica Online. All law schools are obligated to make students take a class known as professional responsibility. American society looks towards basic principal that it is never morally acceptable to directly harm or kill an innocent person; if one does directly harm or kill an innocent person, that person is guilty, by law, of murder; a crime when a human being causes the death of another human being, without lawful excuse, and with intent to kill or with an intent to cause brutal and inhumanly bodily harm by putting an end to life, according to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Euthanasia comes from the ancient Greek work that means “good death”. In the past, many have died painfully from illness, however today we have the technology to take away that pain so one can still live. Through a secular viewpoint euthanasia contradicts one of the oldest principals of law which defends and supports the sanctity of human life (Opposing 12). The root of all euthanasia is “the intent to directly kill someone… not to relieve their pain, not to provide comfort care, not to treat the illness; it is the direct intended action of taking a persons life” (DeBondt 1). Thus the issue of euthanasia and physician assisted suicide negates this entire principal our society looks too. There is a slight difference between assisted suicide and euthanasia; assisted suicide is where the patient administers the end of life act under the supervision of the physician, where euthanasia is when the physician gives the death-causing drug or agent to the patient (Orentlicher 114). Thus any form of euthanasia or assisted suicide cannot legally be supported by the United States government or the Constitution of this country, not only because it is morally and ethically wrong, but because it demands the direct killing of an innocent person’s human life.

            Euthanasia is not a new issue to this world. It was around with the Greeks and was thus defined as “good death”; however they did not have the means for pain management like we do today. Though it was practiced in the ancient world, it was not widely accepted. The model suicide was that of Socrates though his death was actually an execution, not a suicide (Johnston 81). According to the laws of Athens, suicide was “the worst form of death, and therefore the most grievous form of punishment” (87). Philosophers Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoreans, Sophocles, Epictectus (88) and Socrates himself condemned suicide, the only reason Socrates took the poison was because he accepted his sentence (85). Athenian society denied those who committed suicide a conventional burial and confiscated his property (88). Hippocrates, who is often referred to as the ‘Father of Medicine’, wrote a promise “I will give no deadly medicine, even if asked” (102). The reason those few people sought for euthanasia was because they were dying terrible deaths from illness and possibly plaque (Opposing 12). Hippocrates also anticipated that people would ask such questions so he made a statement for physicians and doctors to follow so their knowledge would be used for life and not death (Johnston 102). Margaret Mead, a well known anthropologist, “has studied the role of the ‘medicine man’ across cultures and throughout history.” She says “It is society’s job to protect the physician from such requests” (104). Euthanasia came back into modern times during the reign of Hitler in Germany with his claim for ethnic cleansing; “targeting the mentally defective, psychotics, and those suffering from disease of old age, including Parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis, and brain tumors” (105). However, the backbone of the project comes from the experts in Germany (108); “it was just easier to blame Hitler as the single mad genius and creator of evil”, but the evidence makes it hard to dismiss the creams of just one man but of many (109). However, the world has changed a lot in the past several thousand years. The invention of medicine, painkillers and understanding of therapy has shown great progress in lengthening and easing human life in all forms. The first signs of euthanasia returning came from Holland allowing their citizens to perform assistant or physician assistant suicide in the 1980s; on November 28, 2000 Holland officially legalized and put out guidelines to perform voluntary euthanasia—“occurs with the fully-informed request of a decisionally-competent adult patient or that of their surrogate” (Wikipedia). In 1987, Dr. Jack Kevorkian of Detroit, MI began to advertise in newspapers as a physician consultant for death counseling and was probably the first known voluntary euthanasia doctor in the States. He created two devices, one called the “Thanatron”, a device which has a needle and delivers the lethal drugs mechanically, and the other called the “Mercitron”, which is basically a gas mask that pumps carbon monoxide into the respiratory system. Though illegal in the States, Kevorkian was not found guilty for assisting in suicides until the Thomas Youk case; on 60 minutes, which aired March 26, 1999, Kevorkian administered the lethal injection to Thomas Youk and was found guilty of second-degree murder for deliverance of a controlled substance (Wikipedia). Since Kevorkian administered the injection, which he did in all cases, he preformed voluntary euthanasia, ‘the fully-informed request of a decisionally-competent adult patient’ to be euthanized (Wikipedia). In 1997, Washington legalized indirect euthanasia in 1998. Indirect euthanasia is when a person goes to the physician and requests a prescription of a lethal dose of drugs. They have to have a terminally condition, and once the physician certifies this in 30 days they have to have at least 1 maybe 2 mental health evaluations. After that they are allowed to receive the prescription to end their life. The prescription frees the physician from no other obligation and is thus immune from the execution as are any of the care givers (DeBondt 3). Oregon still remains the only state in the United States of America that allows physician assisted suicide. Though doctors in Oregon are except from legally being charged with murder or assistant suicide according to Oregon law, now violates the US Supreme court ruling of the Washington verses Glucksberg case (Lavery 1). Not only that, but the “Dying with Dignity Act” now violates the principals in the modern version of the Hippocratic Oath; an oath traditionally taken by physicians. The Oath may have changed over the years, but still maintains sanctity of human life in the paragraph that states,

I will follow that method of treatment which according to my ability and judgment, I consider for the benefit of my patient and abstain from whatever is harmful or mischievous. I will neither prescribe nor administer a lethal dose of medicine to any patient even if asked nor counsel any such thing nor perform the utmost respect for every human life from fertilization to natural death… that deliberately takes a unique human life”

In the American Medical Association’s approved version of the Modern Oath goes, “You will exercise your art solely for the cure of your patients, and will give no drug, perform no operation, for a criminal purpose, even if solicited, far less suggest it”. (R 3) In these interpretations of the Hippocratic Oath written by Hippocrates, both contradict allowing any form of physician assisted suicide because such procedures would entail not curing the patient and deliberately taking a human life who was innocent.

Basically the oath states that, “I’ll never prescribe medication to hasten a person’s death” (DeBondt 3). Oregon’s law is completely about a doctor giving a patient a lethal dose of pills to quicken their death. Advocates of assistant suicide justify that mental suffering is a good reason that the patient should be allowed to take a lethal dose of medication because their mental anguish is so severe. However, there are steps that can be taken to ease and lift suffering. Hospice, though a privately owned group, is set up to assist those who are in the final stages of life to ease their suffering. Nurses of Hospice are experts in pain control. Many doctors today are not educated in controlling pain. Before and still, doctors are afraid to give the patient too much pain medication because they may be arrested or sued over treating someone. Now, however, the law has been reversed saying they could be sued or arrested for under treating a patient. “It is harder to prove of over treatment, rather than under treatment” (4). Another argument is that pain management will lead to addiction to pain killers. According to Dr. Richard Payne of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas “There is little or no evidence to support the fact that people who take these drugs for pain relief become addicted” (Johnston 27).

            Assisted suicide was finally addressed by the United States Supreme Court on January 8, 1997 and then decided on six months later on June 26, 1997. The Court found there was no constitutionally protected right to assisted suicide, thus “overturning two Federal Appeals Court rulings that struck down Washington and New York state laws prohibiting assisted suicide” (Lavery 1). According to the final ruling of the case, the Supreme Court found that

Our Nation's history, legal traditions, and practices demonstrates that Anglo American common law has punished or otherwise disapproved of assisting suicide for over 700 years; that rendering such assistance is still a crime in almost every State; that such prohibitions have never contained exceptions for those who were near death; that the prohibitions have in recent years been reexamined and, for the most part, reaffirmed in a number of States; and that the President recently signed the Federal Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act of 1997, which prohibits the use of federal funds in support of physician assisted suicide….This Court's decisions lead to the conclusion that respondents' asserted "right" to assistance in committing suicide is not a fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process Clause (Washington).

The Due Process Clause, under the Fourteenth Amendment, Annotation page 12, says “a State '’is free to regulate procedure of its courts in accordance with it own conception of policy and fairness unless in so doing it offends some principle of justice so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental” (Power).

Thus, the Court said it was not a Constitutional right to seek the assistance of a physician to commit suicide (Washington).

The Court has previously assumed the right to liberty includes decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment. However it drew a clear distinction between forgoing life-sustaining treatment, which was consistent with ‘the common-law rule that forced medication was a battery and the long legal tradition protecting the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment,’ and assisted suicide, which ‘may be just as personal and profound as the decision to refuse unwanted medical treatment. But has never enjoyed the similar legal protection.

The Supreme Court also denied the line of reasoning that assisted suicide violated the right to equal protection in which “states must treat like cases alike” (Lavery 1).

            Evidence to why euthanasia and physician assisted suicide can harm society and the welfare of the nation’s citizens and the lives of the innocent can be present in the Netherlands. Some say the Netherlands is the most open and free society there is today. Yet how free can a country be when reports from the Netherlands government themselves reports from 1990 show that 5,941, over half of the total euthanized in a year, people who made no requested for assistant suicide were killed anyway. Their supreme court also supports not only euthanasia for the terminally ill, but the non-terminally ill and sanctions lethal injections for handicapped infants. Some Dutch citizens are afraid to see a doctor now if they have a serious illness. What is even more absurd, a popular television series has been launched by the Dutch Ministry of Health, called A Matter of Life and Death. “In the program the audience members are actually asked to choose life for one contestant over another. The contestants are real patients” (Johnston 61). A fact that has been noted by other studies performed by the government shows that more than 50% of their cases involved in euthanasia are done without the patient of the families consent. Depressed or misguided patients have been forced into an irreversible choice. In those cases, “8% of doctors proceeded with active involuntary euthanasia even though they believed that there were other courses of action were still possible” and “72% of doctors concealed voluntary euthanasia in death certificates, and in cases of involuntary euthanasia, the doctors… never stated the truth in death certificates” (Johnston 70). In 1990 alone, 1000 active euthanasia’s, “involvement of a clinician as agent in inducing a patient’s death” (Wikipedia), were performed without the patient’s consent, and 4,941 patients were killed by a morphine overdose prescribed to them without their knowledge (Johnston 72). The Dutch country’s leading specialist in pediatric oncology exposed that “he had given some of the children under his care a poison that enables them to commit suicide when they feel so inclined… with or without the parents knowledge” (74). Dr. Christoph Hufeland once said, “If the physician presumes to take into consideration in his work whether a life has value or not, the consequences are boundless and the physician becomes the most dangerous man in the state” (100).

            One might look back to Dr. Jack Kevorkian and say he relieved many people’s lives by assisting in their suicides; however it is better to know that Dr. Kevorkian was never licensed to treat or care for living patients. In fact, he was only licensed to treat dead patients; he was a laboratory pathologist. Not only what he was doing was illegal in America… but he was not even a doctor who was allowed to treat living patients. As a laboratory pathologist, he deals with death and dead things, which he has had a fixation for since he was a young man. When he was studying at University of Michigan, he would take extra visits to rooms of terminal patients and watch them die (47). His love and support for Hitler and his art also plays a crucial influence in his life, supporting the fact he does not see some humans as complete persons worthy of life. He wrote a book called Prescription: Medicide that said the human experiments preformed by the Nazi government “are not absolutely negative”. He also is noted saying that the Jews had it easier because they were killed clinically [though they did end up dying… some in gas chambers and others dropped into icy water to see how long they would last, oh yea that was easier] (49). In all of those who sot and went through euthanasia with Kevorkian, he was the one who not only oversaw the process but was the one playing doctor (45). He also believes “Every disease that may shorten life, no matter how much, is terminal” (56). If this is so, everyone who has ever been sick at one time or another should be euthanized according to this belief. Though Kevorkian was only one such incident where assisted suicide has been manipulated in the States, his influence in the US has become a major factor for the possibility of change in the Constitution. Once his time is served in jail, he is due for earliest parole in 2007, he plans on fighting for the right to die by finding a way to change the law and petitioning change legally (Kevorkian).

            Since the “Dying with Dignity Act” passing in Oregon in 1997, the number of those requesting and following through with euthanasia have increased by 25% in 2005 alone (Table). It says only those with terminal illnesses can request for physician assisted suicide. However, people have even gotten around this factor by inducing a false terminal illness to their body by depriving themselves of food. This creates a false terminal illness called  Failure to Thrive, “a condition where a person becomes malnourished… and they would have a terminally illness and they would qualify them according to Oregon law to get the prescription”. An organization called Compassionate Dying in Oregon was telling people how to get this illness. “This caused abuse in the Oregon system… so now healthy people are getting the prescription when they are not terminally ill” (DeBondt 6).

The Hemlock Society, is the largest euthanasia advocacy group in the world, has done a lot to help support assisted suicide and euthanasia in the states. Derek Humphrey, founder of the Hemlock Society, has done a lot to promote assisted suicide by advocacy in journalism, but also in his book titled Jean’s Way, which explains the story on how he assisted and facilitated the suicide of his first wife Jean who was diagnosed with cancer (Johnston 2). After his first wife’s death, he married his second wife Ann, who was also an advocate for assisted suicide and had helped coined the name of the society early on. Ann had always had second thoughts of the society, but once she was diagnosed with breast cancer she found herself unsure of what to do (9). Thinking her husband would sympathize with her situation, he disregarded her coldly and pressured her into going along with assistant suicide. Ann, however, did not feel that she wanted to die, but her husband kept pursuing her, trying to talk her into letting him help her die. She contacted Rita Marker, executive director of the International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assistant Suicide in the United States, an anti-euthanasia supporter, and told her what was going on and asked for her help (DeBondt 1). She later admitted

that she had helped Derek by sanitizing’ the story of his relationship with his first wife, omitting from the book the fights and arguments, and most ominously, omitting the fact that the lethal ‘concoction’ had failed to do its work on Jean. Ann said that Humphry had in fact suffocated her (Johnston 10).

Eventually, Ann gave into her husband’s pressures and took the pills which ended up taking her life Before she gave in, she sent notes and letters to Rita Marker explaining the truth about the situation and how Derek had been so forceful and manipulative. Her last wish “was to have the articles published”. Rita Marker did so in her book Deadly Compassion. Rita Marker also is a practicing attorney along with being an educator and public speaker (DeBondt 5).

            Some argue ‘why keep someone alive when they are suffering so greatly?’

What you have to understand about the dying process, as a person dies… say if the person has lung cancer, and they are comfortable; the dying process can be physically painful because it is hard to breathe, and as your body starts to shut down your lungs start to fill up with fluid… your body dies from the outside in… When a person nears death, it is not uncommon for a person to have their body produces more fluid … a person no longer becomes hungry. Soon they won’t create urine, and the toxins in their body build up and they eventually die from toxins.

It is then ok to let the body die a natural death, which can still be managed by pain medication. The medical world along with the Supreme Court of the United States maintains this fact to be true.

When you have surgery, they put you under and give you heavy drugs and put you on a ventilator that is common. But if a person has the last stages of cancer… the condition is killing them… wither you have the ventilator on or off, it will not change the outcome of their condition. If they have a stroke and damage their brain so severely, that is considered as brain death, little to no brain function and there is little no hope to ever function again (DeBondt 1).

Those who seek assisted suicide measures universally have show they believe in three factors; they’re afraid of dying, they don’t want to lose control, and they don’t want to be a burden (2). Yet, if one is  afraid of dying… why do you want to die sooner. Most times patients who strongly feel they are a burden to their family are operating under assumption and miscommunication. Feeling like one has control of life is also an invalid statement because who really has control of their life completely? “How could anyone be in complete control when you’re basically sitting on sphere hurling through space?” (5).

The target audience for euthanasia or physician assisted suicide is the vulnerable, the depressed and the despairing. The problems with allowing such to be legal in a country are

Undermining the trust of the doctor-patient relationship, patients would be less than honest about their illnesses if it might cost them their lives, risk of mistaken diagnoses, risk of coercion [basically peer pressuring them into behaving a certain way], immediate danger for the frail, disabled, and those unable to pay for beneficial medical care, outside pressure on the physician, and for overworked doctors killing would be much easier than continuously fighting a serious and chronic ill patient (Johnston 101).

The Netherlands clearly show us all of these evidences of enabling and allowing euthanasia and assisted suicide to happen.

A solution to euthanasia would be one or both of these things; provide education to doctors on understanding and assisting in better treating their patients with pain management and also through the help of hospice aiding those in their last days. Though hospice still needs to be improved it is a better step in helping one managing their pain while still living till the end of their natural lives.

The slippery slope will eventually catch up to us if we do not draw a line somewhere. Since the ruling of Washington verses Glucksberg, the United States Supreme Court maintains that the Constitution does not uphold that the right to die is a right of the citizens of this country. Euthanasia opens the door to devaluing a whole society. Giving the doctors and physicians the power to measure a person to say if they are of value or not anymore is not what we should be doing. The United States of America still maintains that all people are created equal (Kindig). “Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have been condemned throughout the history of medicine civilization. Although there have been lapses in this standard, society has recognized those lapses as ethical breaches” (Johnston 100).

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