Arguments For And Against Euthanasia

Arguments for and against euthanasia

The meaning of the word euthanasia, comes from Greek and means ‘good death’, however, for decades numerous countries around the world have lived a debate about the benefits and/or damages of euthanasia. Which following principles of dignity and respecting the ability to decision about life itself can be an option to consider in cases of terminal diseases where the only option to minimize suffering is this.

Being talking about life and the ability to be completed by intervention of a third party is that religious, ethical, scientific and legal issues are taken into account in this debate that seems to challenge social consensus.

It is not strange that after numerous discussions this option of having ‘a decent death’ is only legal in a small number of countries: Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Canada and Colombia.

The controversy that awakens this issue responds to the definitive ‘solution’ (death) that is offered in equally extreme situations (terminal or degenerative and very painful situations). This context is probably the one that explains that when talking about the subject, of this ‘good death’, numerous nuances arise for and against.

Introduction

Euthanasia is that voluntary, intentional, studied and conscious procedure that a doctor performs to accelerate the death of a terminal patient of some incurable condition;At the conscious, studied and deliberate request of the patient or relatives, who, fully aware that there is no healing treatment for ailment;They ask the doctor to perform it on the patient in order to end the pain and suffering intolerable and intractable.

(RAE, 2014).

Euthanasia is classified in different ways: direct and indirect according to medical, voluntary and involuntary actions whether or not there is the patient’s consent.

According to medical actions

• Direct euthanasia: when there is an intentional provocation of the doctor who seeks the termination of the patient’s life. This in turn has two forms (Constitutional Court of Colombia, 2014):
• Active or positive: it is considered active or positive because there is a medical deployment to produce the death of a person such as directly supplying some type of drug or performing interventions whose objective is to cause death.
• Passive or negative: it is passive or negative occurs when death is produced by the omission of treatments, medications, therapies or food. In this type of euthanasia, the doctor’s performance is negative because his behavior is ‘not doing’. In other words, all kinds of activity are completed that seeks to prolong the life of a person who is in the terminal phase, since it has been concluded that the treatment does not lead to the improvement of the patient.
• Indirect euthanasia: It is the one that occurs when it originates without the intention of causing the death of the patient. That is, it occurs as a result of performing intense medical procedures, with therapeutic intention, which can produce death.

According to the patient’s will

• Voluntary: It is one in which the patient is the one who makes the decision or by third parties obeying the wishes that the patient has previously expressed in some type of document or recording.
• Non -volunteer: a third makes the decision because it is not possible.
• Involuntary: It happens when a third makes the decision because it is not possible.

Arguments for and against

Historically, the debate on euthanasia has tended to focus on a series of key issues. According to the American and Bioethical American Ezekiel Emanuel (1994), opposition to euthanasia, supporters of this have presented four main arguments:

• that people have the right to self-determination and, therefore, to allow to choose their destiny;
• Helping a subject to die could be a better option to require that they continue to suffer;
• The distinction between passive euthanasia, which is often allowed, and active euthanasia, which is not substantive, or in which the underlying principle – the doctrine of the double effect – is unreasonable or not very solid;Y
• Allowing euthanasia will not necessarily lead to unacceptable consequences.

In the same way he argues that there are four main aspects presented by the opponents of euthanasia:

• Not all deaths are painful or unworthy;
• Alternatives such as the interruption of active treatment combined with the use of effective pain relief through palliative care;
• The distinction between active and passive euthanasia is morally significant;Y
• The legalization of euthanasia will place society in the fallacy of the domino effect, which will lead to unacceptable consequences from ethical, moral and in some religious points of view.

In both arguments we can see that a point that, very commonly, marks the dividing line between supporters and the opponents of euthanasia is the vision of human dignity, since it is used both to justify the maintenance of the prohibition of euthanasia andTo decriminalize it. Therefore, a recommendation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, adopted on May 21, 1999, establishes that dignity is an absolute notion:

"Dignity is inherent in the existence of each human being. If your possession is due to peculiarities, skills or any condition, dignity would not be the same or universally peculiar for all human beings. Therefore, the human being is invested with dignity throughout his life. Pain, suffering or weakness cannot deprive it of it ". (Council of Europe, 1999).

This recommendation requires ‘consecrate and protect the right of the termly sick and dying people to a complete range of palliative care’ and ‘maintain absolute intentional prohibition of the life of incurable and dying patients’.

Position that goes against the above by Simon Blackburn (1944) who considers that it is impossible to base the prohibition in respect for life, and even less in respect for dignity;since what does not really want respect for life, but for the act of dying, that is, to treat as sacrosanct the procedure often intolerable, cruel, without any and painful dignity of our natural solution ’.

The impact of euthanasia on the issue of human dignity goes beyond the question of an individual situation at the end of life and pain suffered by this situation.

Hence, euthanasia opponents are based on the fact that the pain are currently well taken into account and are often calmly calm down, especially in palliative care services. More this leaves any form of suffering that is not pain such as: the progressive loss of control over the body itself, as in the case of neurodegenerative diseases;the deformation of the body and, especially, of the face;and permanent loss of autonomy.

Some doctors and commentators object to the need to introduce euthanasia in the law, due to the progress, present and future, of palliative medicine in the fight against suffering in its entirety. Therefore, the geneticist Axel Kahn (2011) says: ‘would solve an euthanasia law if that were the only way to calm suffering’.

conclusion

The notion of the right to life and its derivations are subject to philosophical, legal and moral debate. Several philosophical or religious traditions reject suicide in their various forms. Others specifically reject euthanasia: the intervention of an actor who ends the patient’s life is considered a form of murder because he considers it immoral, little ethical or an extreme solution as stated in this text and therefore should not be regulated under normsome the question of a ‘good death’.

In all cases, regardless of whether euthanasia is decriminalized or not, what is at stake for doctors and care teams remains ethical: the law does not prevail over ethical and personal reflection in the choice of acts to the acts toend of life, lethal injections, decision to stop treatment or terminal sedation. In the case of euthanasia in particular, the question of its ethical legitimacy is not confused with the question of its legalization or decriminalization. In this sense, the French philosopher Marta Spranzi (2009) points out that ‘explicitly allowing the members of the medical profession to give death, even if only with the laudable purpose of relieving the sufferings of the patients, even by the doctors themselves, as more problematic than the reality of the gesture itself, it must be fulfilled in the silence of the medical relationship ‘because of possible consequences.

There are also religious views on euthanasia. While the point of view on the subject is not necessarily intertwined directly with religion, it often affects the opinion of a person. Because the influence of religion on someone’s views towards palliative care makes a difference, they often perform a smaller function than could be expected. More this all this leaves the human dignity that we saw cannot leave outside its conditions beyond that is why being in favor in cases of terminal illnesses in which the end of suffering is not guaranteed and therefore neitherA termination worthy of life, euthanasia is a good option to have a good death.