Euthanasia

Euthanasia is the deliberate ending of life of a person suffering from an incurable

disease. It is also called mercy killing. Much of society today is in favor of euthanasia

because they think we have the right to decide for ourselves if it is right to terminate

someone’s life. The more widely held opinion is against euthanasia primarily because

society feels that we as human beings are in no position to behave as God and end

someone’s life. The double edge-sword of euthanasia is that while proponents say it puts

an end to useless suffering, those who object believe its inherent evil is that it will put an

end to “useless” people.

The potential effects of a legalized practice of euthanasia are serious. The

improvement in terminal care is a direct result of attempts made to minimize suffering. If

that suffering had been terminated by killing the patients who bore it, then we may never

have known the advances in the control of pain, nausea, breathlessness, and other terminal

symptoms that the last twenty years have seen. Some diseases that were terminal a few

decades ago are now easily cured by newly developed treatments. This means that if we

accept euthanasia now, we may never discover effective treatments for those diseases that

are now terminal.

Every doctor can tell stories of being proven wrong in their prognosis’ to patients

or of people who were diagnosed as terminally ill and recover. Imagine, if euthanasia

were legal, most of those people would have died. That is a major risk too great to take.

Pressure on the patient is a cause of many deaths. Plenty of patients feel guilty for

imposing burdens on those who care for them, even when the families are happy to bear

the burden. The result is a request for euthanasia and the death of a great many patients

who do not wish to die.

Much of today’s health care is provided through managed care and health

maintenance organizations (HMO’s). Under this system, doctors and hospitals receive

more money for doing less for a patient. The economics of this system could be very open

to “cost effective” mercy killings.

It may seem an over dramatic analogy, but “Dr. Death” or Jack Kevorkian, in his

testimony at his trial for murdering a man, said that what he did provided “a final solution”

for his patient. Adolf Hitler also believed in providing a “final solution.” Euthanasia is

abused and will be further abused if it is legalized more. In the Netherlands, it is practiced

publicly. Abuses arise when a patient is wealthy and an inheritance is at stake, when the

doctor has made mistakes in diagnosis and treatment and hopes to avoid detection, or

when insurance coverage for treatment costs is about to expire.

There is no question that by letting a suffering patient die on request, we shorten the

period of suffering. I must admit that I wouldn’t want to endure prolonged suffering and

pain. However, we must not give into the euthanasia “quick fix”, or thousands of people,

such as the disabled, the poor, the elderly, and the young, will be in great danger.

Euthanasia is a type of mercy killing which devastates many humans.

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