Professor Woodring
English 051
April 19, 2011
Euthanasia
Respecting and promoting patient control has been one of the driving forces behind the Hospice movement and right-to-die issues that range from honoring living wills to promote euthanasia (mercy killing). These issues can create and conflict between a patient’s desire for control and a physician’s duty to promote health. These are issues of law, ethics, medicine, and philosophy. Some physicians may favor strong pain control and approve the right of patients to refuse life-support, but do not favor euthanasia or assisted suicide. Often patients who ask for physician-assisted suicide can be treated by increasing the patient’s comfort and relieving symptoms, thereby reducing the patient’s need for drastic measures.
Physicians have as one of their special moral duties an unconditional obligation never to kill, and that is for this reason that they may not participate in euthanasia. Physicians by their professional commitments may never directly and intentionally cause the death of a patient, and therefore administering euthanasia, even where a patient has competently requested it, is forbidden to anyone who practices medicine.1 there are duties of physicians that are special moral duties that arise in the nature of the physician’s professional role. They are: duties to patients, duties to the profession, duties to patients’ families, duties to colleagues, duties to other health-care providers, duties to institutions (hospitals, medical schools), and duties to society. 2 (Seay Pg.517)
Nurses and physicians should provide pain relief as needed. They are afraid of a malpractice suit that can result in a fine, prison time or even both. As long as the medication for pain relief is therapeutic and does not result in the patient being unconscious and causing respiratory depression rather than pain relief this could be considered euthanasia .3 If that happened and result in imprisonment. “Angel of Death” involves a single health care provider who commits multiple murders within a health care facility.4 These kind of health care professionals usually act on patients that are critically ill and want to end their lives. This is also considered euthanasia. Those professionals could also do imprisonment. They cannot make that judgment of whether or not to end a life just because the patient asks them to help them. Those professional in health care also takes the oath of caring for the living, not in provoking the dead. (Fiesta Pg.10)
There are some cases that could be of good with euthanasia with the Terri Schiavo case that happened in 1990. Terri Schiavo was 26 years old and had collapsed in the hall way of her apartment and experienced hypoxia for several minutes.5 She had no living will or a power of attorney. Four months after her injury her husband had a court claimed her as incompetent. She was in a vegetable state after her accident and became unable to swallow so her husband had given the ok to place a percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy (PEG) tube. 6 Michael Schiavo (Terri’s husband) worked on getting her regular and aggressive physical, occupational, and speech therapies. Despite their best efforts and explorations of all potentially viable treatments, her condition failed to improve. In the year 2000 there was a trial to resolve the dispute over the extent of Terri Schiavo’s neurologic devastation and to determine how she would exercise her right of privacy, or liberty interest to forgo life supporting medical treatment, if she were able to communicate.7 Mr. Schiavo and the Schindlers (Terri’s parents) were not on the same wave length with making the decision on ending life. After presenting all the evident and having the witnesses testify the court found that she met the statutory definition of the persistent vegetative state and that there was no hope of her regaining consciousness or the ability to communicate. After the judge herd all the testimonies he ordered for the PEG tube to be removed. The Shindlers were upset that them being the parents they had no choice in the decision so they appealed the Judge’s decision. At the appeal the decision was still to remove the PEG tube. 8 The tube feeding was turned off in 2001. Two days later the treatment was resumed when the Schindlers was presented with a different trial court Judge. After going through again several testimonies the court found that Terri Schiavo remained in a persistent vegetative state and again ordered the withdrawal of the feeding tube. Her life was ended in March 2005.9 There are two things to consider with euthanasia with Terri Schiavo’s case. 1. What were her medical condition and the outcome of it? 2. In such a condition, what would she choose to do? Several argue that the central question of the Teri Schiavo case is a struggle between sanctity of life versus quality of life. Others felt passionately that discontinuing Terri’s artificial nutrition and hydration would initiate a cascading disregard for disabled persons or others who are judged to have poor quality of life.10 The whole entire family including the immediate family should have a say in the care of their love on. One of the main reasons the Schindlers had argued that Michael Schiavo should not be allowed a voice in the decisions concerning his wife’s treatment is because for over the 15 year period of caring for her, he had a relationship with another women. (Perry, Churchill, and Kirshner Pg. 744-747)
Euthanasia is the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of hopelessly sick or injured individuals in a relatively painless way for reasons of mercy. In situations that someone has a life threatening illness that cannot be cured then euthanasia might be there choice. If a physician would tell me that I had cancer and only had six months to live and the cancer would get out of control with pain then I would consider euthanasia just not to be in any kind of pain anymore. Some people would be against this because of family and friends but personally I would not want to put my friends and family through seeing me in pain and discomfort that way. Euthanasia can be a peaceful and mindful event. It is all in what your beliefs are.
Work Cited
1. Fiesta, Janine. "Do No Harm: When Caregivers Violate Our Golden Rule, Part 1." Nursing Management 30.8 (1999): 10-11. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 22 Apr. 2011
2. Seay, Gary. "Euthanasia and physicians' moral duties." The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30.5 (2005): 517-533. MEDLINE. EBSCO. Web. 22 Apr. 2011
3. Perry, Joshua E, Larry R Churchill, and Howard S Kirshner. "The Terri Schiavo case: legal, ethical, and medical perspectives." Annals of Internal Medicine 143.10 (2005): 744-748. MEDLINE. EBSCO. Web. 22 Apr. 2011
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