One of the biggest ethical debates going on in the medical world right now, next to abortion, is the subject of euthanasia. Or what it may sometimes be called, “a good death.” It’s when doctors put terminally ill patients out of their misery by giving them a death-inducing drug, or by no longer giving life-prolonging treatment. As strange as it may seem, there are some people that think this act of compassion is immoral, unethical, and cruel. They may have their reasons, but I have mine too.
Now tell me if I’m wrong here, but I think that when a patient has an incurable disease like cancer, multiple sclerosis, or severe neuropathy, and they’re begging you to put them out of their misery, wouldn’t you want to do just that? And what if someone is alive, but really isn’t living? People that have had severe brain damage and have become vegetabilazed or put into comas that they have no chance of coming out of really have no purpose in life anymore, and it isn’t worth keeping their bodies around to suffer. This leads me to my next point.
When the person’s health starts to deteriorate to the point where they can no longer care for themselves, they may find this an undignified way of living. Some can’t go to the bathroom for themselves, some have to eat through feeding tubes, and some have to have people roll them around so they don’t get bedsores. They start to become a burden on their family, not only financially, but physically. Usually they have to go back and forth from the hospital, or if they’re immobilized, someone has to push them around all day. In this case, killing the patient not only alleviates the patient, but the family as well.
Some doctors claim to agree to all of this, but use the Hippocratic Oath as a reason for being against it. The Hippocratic Oath is a ritual of sorts that many doctors go through when they get their license to practice medicine. In the old versions, it states that you may not issue lethal drugs under any circumstances. However in the modern version it does not say that. It says that when coming across the issue of taking a life, you must go about it with caution. Also, it clearly states that you must do whatever is in the best interest of the patient. It states, “I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being”. This shows that the job of the doctor or physician is not to go to any length to cure the patient of his sickness, but of his pain.
What it all comes down to though, is that people should have the right to choose. We can choose whether or not we kill our lungs or not with smoke, we can choose whether or not we kill our brain cells with alcohol, and women can even choose whether or not they can take the life of an unborn child. For many terminally ill patients, treatment does not prolong their living, but their death. Why shouldn’t they have the right to choose how they go?
