Wrongfulness Of Euthanasia example essay topic

Karen Anne Quinlan, Jack Kevorkian, names of common, everyday people who have, in recent years, become household words. Upon hearing the name Karen Anne Quinlan, ones mind is immediately taken to the bedside of the lifeless shell of what was once a full of life young woman. We see the struggles of a family who desire nothing more than to lay to rest the remains of their daughter. Jack Kevorkian, the "killer doctor", imprisoned for granting the requests of his terminal patients. Euthanasia comes from the Greek word eu thanatos, which translates literally to mean good death. Euthanasia is defined as intentionally and compassionately allowing a person to die, who, in all likelihood has no real hope of living, despite the fact that with the advancements of medical technology, the potential to keep him alive is on hand, albeit only for a short time.

It is my belief that euthanasia is not immoral; in fact, it should be accessible to anyone who makes it clear that he wants to escape pain and suffering that are due to illness. However, there are those who strongly disagree and with that in mind, I will explore just such a person. In his essay, "The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia", J. Gay-Williams presents what I would consider to be the 'Traditional View' of euthanasia and the typical arguments against it. He runs through three rudiments that, in his opinion, an act must meet to be called euthanasia: 1) A life is taken; 2) The person whose life is taken is believed to be suffering from a disease or injury from which he cannot reasonably be expected to recover; and 3) The taking of the life must be deliberate and intentional.

He had a variety of concerns: That euthanasia does violence to the natural goal of survival, it violates God's commandments and acts against God who is the rightful owner of our body; it does violence to our dignity; mistaken diagnosis is possible; miracles happen; experimental procedures may be developed... As well, the patient or the health care provider might be more inclined to give up too easily. Finally, there is the slippery slope argument that starts by allowing people to take their own lives and winds up with us taking the lives of those WE think are hopelessly ill 'on their behalf'. There are three major points that Gay-Williams makes in arguing about euthanasia.

First, he says that euthanasia goes against human nature because the human body's function is to stay alive. That is what it does. Breathing, eating, sleeping, protection, healing, all are part of the bodies natural tendency for self-preservation. Secondly, euthanasia goes against a humans' best interest and if euthanasia is not practiced, conceivably the person would be able to rise above his physical problems and live to achieve much more than he has already. There are breakthroughs everyday and furthermore, a doctor may actually have misdiagnosed the patient. Euthanasia makes it too easy for a patient and their family to give up and end it all.

Finally, Gay-Williams believes that the adoption of a policy of limited euthanasia could lead to great abuses, if medical personnel are permitted to allow a person to die just because he is in pain and has little if any likelihood of getting better, they will begin to take their work less seriously. They will no longer put as much effort into trying to help a person get well. Doctors and nurses might see a patient who is in extensive pain and decide that he would be "better off dead", as Gay-Williams put it, however, this decision could very well be a subconscious one, and work the patient toward death. They might originally feel enough "sympathy" for only the very ill to put them to death, but this "sympathy" will slowly but surely reassign itself to less critically ill patients.

Sliding even further down this "slippery slope", society might begin condemning those it judges too "ill" to be valuable members of society to death, in the name of euthanasia. In other words, if euthanasia is allowed, society and its doctors will begin to play God. Unfortunately for Gay-Williams, it is a reasonably effortless task to show that each of his standard arguments against the traditional view of euthanasia is unsound, since each argument clearly has at least one, and in some cases more than one, false premise. I deduce from Gay-Williams that the standard arguments against euthanasia are worthless! While I cannot say that his arguments do not have some power, he does not convince me that euthanasia is altogether and inherently wrong in any and every situation.

The majority of people, who ask to be euthanized, are in tremendous pain. Their lives have lost all meaning to them, and they do not wish to live if they must be in such misery. Therefore, these people have lost their dignity. The only way they can regain that dignity, their sense of purpose, their function as a being, is to know that they will be able to end their lives when they wish to.

God is a loving, understanding god who will forgive a suffering person for taking his own life to escape the dreadfulness of his anguish. Now, this does not include 'ending it all' out of simply feeling sorry for yourself because you are down on your luck. This is strictly for medical purposes. He will understand their motives for killing themselves.

Euthanasia is not comparable to murder: It is not inherently wrong. Occasionally a medical prognosis is wrong. Doctors are wrong, equipment malfunctions, and miracles do occur. There is a small possibility that a person will be told that he will die within a certain amount of time, recover, and end up living for many years, but this very rarely happens. Usually, prognoses are fairly accurate, equipment is tested regularly, and miracles are few. The greatest admiration should be had for those who decide to stay alive and try to withstand their pain in order to wait until their "time to go", but most of the people who do choose euthanasia are in too much pain to be able to stand living any longer.

The implementation of a policy restricting euthanasia has the possibility of leading to abuse, but it is not likely to bring to fruition the fears of those who are against euthanasia. We cannot and do not live our lives based on what might happen. Most healthcare workers take too much pride in their work to be willing to look to simply permit many of their sicker patients to die. They, in fact, get pleasure from playing God already. This, from a Utilitarian point of view, would in itself be the good. The very acts of prolonging a person's life when he is sick, of resetting broken limbs, of vaccinating young children against disease, and of inducing labor are all instances of playing God, hence, the greatest good for the greatest number.

I would have to say that more likely than the possibility that doctors will become lax in their care -- yet still quite unlikely -- is his claim that society will begin to condemn the sick and misfits to euthanasia. However, as long as Americans remember the reasoning behind euthanasia -- that being that the sick are suffering needlessly and seek and deserve a way out of that suffering -- and laws are put into place to regulate the practice of euthanasia, society is unlikely to abuse euthanasia. Euthanasia is the taking of a person's life intentionally, presumably with humanitarian motives. Euthanasia is, to me, inherently right. A person should not be forced to suffer endlessly for something he did not do.

Suffering is not a source of human dignity; it actually does just the opposite by taking dignity from a person. I do believe that euthanasia should be limited; patients must choose euthanasia themselves. America is intolerably merciless if sick, suffering, dying humans are denied the right to a swift, painless, dignified death. A person is in charge of his own body and should have the right to act under that sovereignty, to include requesting the help of others if need be. What I have learned from Gay-Williams is that euthanasia is not something that is a cut and dried issue. There are many deeper issues that must be addressed in order to make a sound argument either for or against euthanasia.