Examples Of Consequentialism

Brittany Maynard is a women who recommend to people to take assisted suicide because she does not want to see people suffer from pain. However, the author do not agree with her idea. She said that Maynard’s reasoning has a huge flaw. She suggested that people do not choose suicide lack dignity in order to people even take palliative medication but they still suffer pain, personality changes, and verbal, cognitive loss.

Brittany Maynard was a woman terminally ill with cancer and made a decision to end her life with dignity. Topics include her family views, her struggles with a cancerous tumor, mention of her plan to die, and the controversy surrounding her right to die. Maynard had great influence surrounding the right-to-die movement. This essay will also include the topic of state laws that have signed the bill for patients that are terminally ill that choose to end their lives. This article includes the views of those who perceive this right as assisted suicide.

Glioblastoma Multiforme is a highly malignant, fast growing cancer that affects the surrounding brain tissue. Brittany Maynard was 29 years old when she died, on November 1, 2014. Maynard was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme on January 1,2014. After many tests, the doctors told her she had six months to live. She then moved from California to Oregon for that state’s Death With Dignity Act. The right-to-die law should be in every state because a person should have the right to make the decision to end his or her’s own life.

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In order to fulfill the act she had to move to another state where it was legal and ended her life by using Barbiturates that her doctor prescribed to her. After this event took place it created some thought to legalize assisted suicide. California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, and Rhode Island just to name some of the 12 states that have tried to legalize PAS several times have failed to do so. Many have considered how Maynard’s death can cause others to take up her actions and do the same. The choice to die, and has been only legalized in three U.S. states: Oregon, Washington, and Montana. In Oregon it was legalized in 1997 but is not referred to as physician assisted suicide but as physician aid in dying, in Washington it was legalized in 2008, and lastly in Montana in 2009. Physician assisted suicide should not become a legal option to individuals, because it is against religious beliefs, patients will be prompted to give up to soon, and it violates professional ethical

Brittany Maynard, a young newlywed, was diagnosed with aggressive and fatal brain cancer. She moved to Oregon with her husband so she could have control at the end of her life under Oregon’s death with dignity law.

A consequentialist, like Joshua Greene for example, would argue that morality is “goal directed”. If the goal that is desired is moral, then the decisions and actions to achieve this goal are also moral. If the consequences are good, then a person’s actions are good; if the consequences are bad, a person’s actions are bad or immoral, according to consequentialists. Therefore, from the utilitarian perspective, human behavior is neither good or bad, right or wrong; it is the consequences of the behaviors and actions that determine the morality (Behrens and Rosen 280). In the book “Utlitarianiam: A Guide for the Perplexed”, Krister Bykvist explains the classic version of utilitarianism, known as the maximizing act-utilitarianism, says that “an act is right just in case it leads to more total well-being than any other alternative action” (Bykvist). This approach tries to both increase good consequences and to reduce bad consequences (Behrens and Rosen 276). The utilitarian approach, therefore, does not base morality upon emotional feelings, but rather upon reason

In a moral dilemma, using a process that considers making the most people happy may be the best outcome. Radbruch, Leget, Bahr, Müller-Busch, Ellershaw, de Conno, & Vanden Berghe (2016) defines assisted suicide as “a person intentionally helping another person to terminate his or her life, at that person’s voluntary and competent request” (pg. 5). With this definition, the patient is in complete understanding of outcome of their decision. So applying the utilitarian theory, it would be to allow patients that fit all the criteria the choice of physician assisted suicide as it would provide them the happiness of having that as a choice. This is an important choice to have because as it states in the same article, “patients must be suffering unbearably, with no prospect of improvement, but the illness does not have to be terminal” (Radbruch et al, 2016, pg. 4). Why should someone wanting to go through with a physician assisted suicide be forced to live a life they do not want? Also, having this choice would make the greatest amount of happiness for most number of patients because the patient would feel like a burden emotionally and financially to their families. So in order to save their family from seeing them grow worse from the

Brittany Maynard, a woman known for her advocacy in the controversial topic of assisted suicide, officially ended her life this fall after learning of her fatal brain tumor. After complaining of horrible headaches, she decided to see a doctor where they gave her this traumatic news. She had two corrective surgeries to try and stop the growth of her large tumor, but they were unsuccessful. Her doctor then suggested full brain radiation, but after months of researching this option, along with many other, she knew her quality of what short life she had left would quickly deteriorate. With the help of her family, friends, and newly-wed husband, she made the decision to move with her loved ones from her California home to Oregon, where death with

campaigner for assisted suicide to be legalized nationwide. “I do not want to die,” said Brittany Maynard

The videos Maynard made announcing her decisions with her family supporting them went viral, causing America’s attention to focus on her and whether or not her final choice is the right one to make. When faced with a terminal illness, the choice of death with dignity, also known as physician-assisted suicide, is the wrong choice to make. Reasons of this include the moral aspect of it, the medical complications, and the prognoses can be and are often survived.

Utilitarianism makes it hard to decipher what is ethically right. In the realm of somebody who utilizes utilitarian morals, things are either right or wrong, there is no in-between.

“I probably would have suffered in hospice care for weeks or even months. And my family would have had to watch that” (Maynard). Maynard believes that her family won’t be able to see her in a deteriorating condition therefore decided to opt out of that. Families can’t see their loved one in pain everyday of every hour. “I did not want this nightmare scenario for my family, so I started researching death with dignity ….…I quickly decided that death with dignity was the best option for me and my family” (Maynard). Maynard felt that undergoing a treatment for getting rid of the tumor would be more painful for her and her family. No one can give Brittany and her family a hundred percent guarantee that tumor would actually go away forever. Doctors confirmed that if Brittany goes under treatment, she will be the same person she was before treatment meaning that treatment will have side effects that might affect her for her entire life. The lethal drug used for euthanasia patients is more cost efficient for people. Soumya Karlamangla, author of “Will California’s end-of-life push lethal drugs over costlier care?” explains that drugs that keep one alive are too expensive to afford and have no guarantee of being helpful while the injection or pills to end life are free of cost (Karlamangla). The questions of saving money and doctor’s guarantee that the incurable disease will go away with treatment comes into play during making this important choice. Why would one pay more money for a drug that has no guarantee of saving their life and getting their hopes up when there is a big possibility that nothing will happen. While the lethal drug also known as the euthanasia drug is much less expensive and will do its job with certainty. Therefore if one is debating what route to choose when

These ups and down are sometimes the results of our actions, our thoughts, and our decision to make a better world. The consequences are sometimes produced some positive and negative effects. This is what drives me to choose to explain one of the types of ethics that is consequentialism.

Some argue that immoral actions can be justified by the end result. Some use the utilitarian principles, claiming that if “those actions are right