Morality Of Euthanasia Essay Research Paper The

Morality Of Euthanasia Essay, Research Paper

The Morality of Euthanasia

Technology has brought about drastic changes in the morality of today.s society. One organization it has greatly effected is the medical field. Few would argue with the fact that medical technology has greatly improved the quality of life. However, with doctors and other health care workers having the authority to contribute to both the patients. well-being and inevitable death, society believes there should be limits to best serve the patient.s wishes. The controversial issue that society now stands against, and questions is the practice of euthanasia. Is this .medical advancement. ethical.

Attitudes towards death changed rapidly in the twentieth century as a result of the tremendous advances in medicine. Hiding the approaching death for as long as possible from the patient, which many think of as contemporary behavior, actually started in the second half of the nineteenth century. Doctors and families both thought it would be .too stressful. (Knopf 5) for the patient to .know there is no hope. (Knopf 5). The family was no longer gathered by the bedside, for fear of alarming the patient, and the priest was not summoned to perform the last rites until the patient had lost consciousness or already has died. The clergy protested, causing Vatican II to change the traditional name of .Extreme Unction. to .Anointing of the sick. (Knopf 5) so that the priest could come at any time during a serious illness. Families sacrificed final words of farewell with loved ones because any conversations dealing with impending death were banned.

The mid-twentieth century brought death out of the home and into the hospital, further removing the dying person from his family and spirituality. The image of the dying person became a patient in a .sterile hospital room with tubes attached to virtually every orifice of the body. (Knopf 5). It had come under the control of the doctor who could manipulate the time and length of dying with medical technology.

The medical profession, however, saw death as a failure and doctors frequently chose to avoid dealing with a patient who would soon die. As a result, patients were, and still are, heavily medicated, permitting them to slip away, unknowingly or .snowed out.(Williams 112), the complete opposite of the medieval period when men and women prepared themselves, made their peace, and then welcomed death. But by 1985, an estimated eighty- percent of those who died did so in a hospital or a nursing home, under the care of strangers. In addition, these strangers have been taught in their medical education that their job is to fend off death. So they perform their duties under the growing fear that if every effort is not made to postpone death they have failed and may be sued for a .mercy killing. (Knopf 8). Today death is often correlated with seriously ill or aging patients and physicians and other health care workers all over the world are receiving training to deal with death, hospice care is taking death out of the hospital and bringing it back to the home. Even though many still want to follow the traditional way in dealing with death, family, friends and health officials should be able to handle the situation in accordance with the best interest of the terminally ill patient.

As people take death back into their own control, they demand the right to die when they feel ready. The right to die is becoming an increasingly controversial issue. As more people insist that the right to die is a personal liberty, others, with opposing views, feel strongly about preserving life at all costs and rally together to fight planned suicides, disconnecting support systems, and other efforts to end lives. Those who do not agree with their right to die, warrant those individuals and surrogates, who claim that right for mentally incompetent patients and seriously ill newborns, to exercise the procedure.

Put aside the arguments about the right to die. Shelve the ethical question about doctor assisted suicide. .Jack Kevorkian is on the loose again. (Quill A11) explained one newspaper article. The state of Michigan has a serial killer on its hands. Or maybe, even better a mercy killer. Kevorkian or Dr. Death thinks of himself as a maverick or a martyr; even a crusader like Martin Luther King Jr. But as the count of the dead grows many feel he looks more like .Jack the Ripper, M.D.. (Gordon 6A)

First on the list of Kevorkian.s patients back in 1990 was Janet Adkins, a woman with Alzheimer.s disease who pushed the button on the machine in his suicide mobile. He was charged with and acquitted of first-degree homicide. It was ruled that she killed herself and there was no state law against physician assisted suicide. Then last fall came Sherry Miller and Marjorie Wantz, one with multiple sclerosis, the other with chronic vaginal pain. For his involvement with these deaths, he was indicted again for murder and awaits trial. Now, there is Susan Williams, Kevorkian provided the gas canister and hands-off technical assistance to this fifty-two year old woman who was crippled by multiple sclerosis. He was present when she put the gas mask on, pulled the handle and breathed the carbon monoxide, which took her life. (Sack 24A)

Surprisingly, each of these women wanted to die. Each of them was grateful, polite, and replete with thanks to the man who