Argument in Favor of Euthanasia Essay

However, when the patient has chosen the date and time of their death this gives families ties to adequately prepare and grieve. V. There is also the financial benefit with voluntary active euthanasia. According to an article written by the new England journal of medicine in the united states 30 percent of the Medicare budget is spent on the five percent of people who die within that same year, and as the patient gets closer to death the costs associated with keeping them alive becomes ridiculously expensive and often the total cost of care is not covered by health insurance leaving some responsibilities on the family. With euthanasia patients, can avoid this immense financial burden by opting out of this expensive life sustaining

The next few themes of this article include the discussion of pain, loss of pleasure in life, and the right time to die. The carers felt responsible to prevent their loved ones from experiencing pain and suffering all of their later years of life. They stated that caring for someone they loved with dementia that was extremely unhappy with their quality of life brought up ideas of assisted suicide. They exclaimed that seeing their patient disintegrate in quality of life and in overall health that it was difficult to not consider assisted suicide. Several participants came to a conclusion that their relative was strictly waiting to die because they had suffered enough which made them want to end the pain for them.

Voluntary Euthanasia has been considered a controversial topic for many decades. The idea of committing an act that involves the taking of human life is not one that many people would care to discuss openly. The main argument is that a person who has been diagnosed with an incurable illness and is in extreme pain and their ability to move has been limited, while that person still has control over their destiney should they be allowed take their own life (Bowie, R.2001). The worldwide debate weather one should be allowed to end a life is still one of the biggest ethical issues. The attempt to providing the rights of the individual is in conflict with the moral values of society. Voluntary Euthanasia has been highly rejected by many religious and pro-life institutions.

Modern medical expertise has achieved remarkable achievements in lengthening the lives of humans. Ventilators can support a patient’s weakening lungs and pills can sustain that patient’s bodily processes. For those patients who have a genuine chance of surviving a sickness or accident, medical technology is science’s greatest gift to mankind. For the terminally ill, however, it is just a means of prolonging suffering. Medicine is supposed to alleviate the suffering that a patient undergoes. Yet the only thing that medical technology does for a dying patient is give that patient more pain and agony day after day and cause them to spend more money that could go to help their family after the patient passes away. Some terminal patients in the past have gone to their doctors and asked for a final medication that would take all the pain away— lethal drugs. For example, imagine a woman who was suffering from a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis, begged her doctor to assist her to die because she could no longer stand the pain. Another example is a lady with an inoperable brain

Some people say that euthanasia will end suffering and pain. But what proof do they have or what right do they have to make that claim" (143). Many authors have asked what proof people have to back up their claims but many of them never have any proof at all and are just relying mostly on their own personal beliefs or feelings. They don’t have any factual evidence that euthanasia will or will not end suffering. Some people believe that euthanasia would only end the burden on those who are around the sick. The reason that they think this is that they believe that the people only end a life to end the burden of worrying and the burden of paying high bills. This is a clear-cut example of just some of the debatable issues behind the topic of euthanasia. Many people believe that others might use euthanasia to send old parents or other

As patients come closer to the end of their lives, certain organs stop performing as well as they use to. People are unable to do simple tasks like putting on clothes, going to the restroom without assistance, eat on our own, and sometimes even breathe without the help of a machine. Needing to depend on someone for everything suddenly brings feelings of helplessness much like an infant feels. It is easy to see why some patients with terminal illnesses would seek any type of relief from this hardship, even if that relief is suicide. Euthanasia or assisted suicide is where a physician would give a patient an aid in dying. “Assisted suicide is a controversial medical and ethical issue based on the question of whether, in certain situations,

Albert Camus once quoted, “But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill them self.” Today I will be discussing the topic of Euthanasia also known as “assisted suicide.” The word originated from the Greeks, meaning “good death”. Euthanasia refers to the ending of one’s life, primarily to end suffering and pain. Euthanasia is a controversial topic and generates many political and religious debates. Although euthanasia is illegal in Canada, in some jurisdictions such as the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and the American states of Washington, Oregon and Montana, euthanasia is a legal and common practice.

* Researchers at Duke University recently surveyed hundreds of frail elderly patients receiving outpatient treatment and their families. The elderly patients themselves strongly opposed physician-assisted suicide: only 34% favored legalization, with support even lower among female and black patients. But 56% of their younger relatives favored it, and they were usually wrong in predicting the elderly patients' views.

Conversely, pro-euthanasia activists believe that legalizing euthanasia should be the primary focus of medical care. While some states have already implemented laws abiding to the practice of euthanasia and PAS, others are not so lenient. The states against euthanasia legalization believe that euthanasia will have a bad effect on society and medical organizations in America. However, according to pro-euthanasia groups, euthanasia is beneficial to a vast number of individuals besides terminal patients. As a matter of fact, euthanasia has recently been considered an option by a much broader range of people, including elderly patients who are non-terminal. Elderly patients concerned about their decrepit state often seek easier ways of dying, rather than engaging healthcare professionals about treatment for problems related to age.

Studies show that a percentage of family members of the dying patient also express support for their loved one to die peacefully and of their own volition. Many do not wish to see the patient suffering when there is no way to alleviate the emotional and physical pain they are experiencing. They watch them deteriorate, become hopeless, detached, and ultimately struggle and suffer until the end of life. Scientists studied done on the practice of PAS in the United States, in the five areas it is legal, 355 oncologists were surveyed on their experience with physician assisted suicide. In 73.7% of those cases, the family was in support of the decision for PAS (Emanuel et. al., “The Practice of Euthanasia”). Not only does it upset the families

Death and dying has changed drastically in the past hundred years. In the past, most deaths occurred without warning mostly due to infectious diseases. Back then, medicine could do little to cure illness or extend life (NCBI, 1997). Most deaths occurred in the home surrounded by family. Today, death usually happens to older people following a long-term illness. The dying patient is usually in a hospital or heath care institution of some kind (Carr, 2003). The dying process is now more controlled by the ill patient and their family (Carr, 2003). “The Patient Self Determination Act, passed by Congress in 1990, requires all government-funded health providers to give patients the opportunity to formally articulate their end of life treatment

Euthanasia is a controversial issue. Many different opinions have been formed. From doctors and nurses to family members dealing with loved ones in the hospital, all of them have different ideas for the way they wish to die. However, there are many different issues affecting the legislation and beliefs of legalizing euthanasia. Taking the following aspects into mind, many may get a different understanding as to why legalization of euthanasia is necessary. Some of these include: misunderstanding of what euthanasia really is, doctors and nurses code of ethics, legal cases and laws, religious and personal beliefs, and economics in end-of-life care.

Euthanasia is the practice of ending an individual's life in order to relieve them from an incurable disease or unbearable suffering. The term euthanasia is derived from the Greek word for "good death" and originally referred to as “intentional killing” ( Patelarou, Vardavas, Fioraki, Alegakis, Dafermou, & Ntzilepi, 2009). Euthanasia is a controversial topic which has raised a great deal of debate globally. Although euthanasia has received great exposure in the professional media, there are some sticky points that lack clarity and need to be addressed. Euthanasia is a divisive topic, and different interpretations of its meaning, depend on whether the person supports it or not. While a few societies have accepted euthanasia, there are

There are many ethical issues that the medical field faces daily. One major issue that is a common debate recently is death and dying and the ethical dilemmas associated with this stage in life. There are many different routes a patient can take when they are diagnosed with a terminal illness, two routes that are often up for debate are palliative care and physician assisted suicide. Many ethical concepts are brought up in the debate of these routes of care, sometimes even conflicting one another. Since medicine has advanced over many years we are experiencing a growing population of elders. With this increase in the elderly population, the debate of death and dying has become an important topic to

Euthanasia is the act of either causing death without pain or not being able to avoid death from happening by natural causes in an individual with a terminal illness or irreversible coma. The practice is also known as “Physician Assisted Suicide” or PAS. Euthanasia can be voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary. Voluntary euthanasia is when the patient explicitly requests  for the procedure to occur. Non-voluntary euthanasia is when the patient cannot make their own decisions like a person in a coma. Involuntary euthanasia is performed without the patient's consent at all. Euthanasia can also be categorized as passive or active. Passive deals with the removal of a  life support system and active involves a doctor or another third party, at the choice of the patient, the direct use of a lethal dose of a drug on the patient. Moreover, this practice is illegal in all states of America excluding Oregon, Montana, California, Washington DC, Washington, Vermont, and Colorado. In the year 1994, “Oregon became the first Jurisdiction in the world to