End of Life Ethical Dilemma, Essay Example

Paralyzed patients like Dan Crews want to voluntarily remove their life support because they argue that their quality of life is not worth living and the probability of having a meaningful life is too low (Ghose). It’s the society’s ethical responsibility to allow all of its citizens to live a quality of life but sometimes extreme situations occur where the society cannot provide acceptable standards of life to some of its members such as Dan Crews due to the nature of his injury. In such a scenario, may be the best possible solution is to honor the citizen’s wish as it may relieve him of the struggles and hardships he has to go through on a daily basis.

If the society believes that life should not be taken so easily even if the circumstances are extremely difficult, it should take steps to ensure that all necessary resources are provided to the patients. In Dan Crew’s case, the hospital is not allowing the life support system to be removed but at the same time, regulations have made it difficult for Dan to apply for Medicaid whose qualification requires the applicant to be broke. One can go around the requirement by setting up a trust but that would mean transferring financial decision making from the patient to the trustee. It is situations like these which create complicated situations for patients like Dan because law doesn’t provide a guaranteed income support for the life of the patient and at the same time, the hospital refuses to give the patient a right to determine his own fate even though patient can never be expected to work. Thus, ethical solution would either be guaranteeing lifetime financial support or giving the patient a choice to decide his own fate otherwise financial woes would only add to the already difficult life a patient is living.

Society has an ethical responsibility to respect an individual’s dignity and no one wants to be dependent for the entire duration of his life. In cases, where the patient can at least be expected to support himself sooner or later, it makes sense to deny him the right to choose voluntary death as was the case with Georgia engineer, Larry McAfee. McAfee found work and was able to live independently. But cases where patients cannot be expected to be self-dependent ever, the patients should be granted the right because dependency naturally leads to guilt which only raises the depression level over time.

Patients like Dan Crew also have a right to feel fulfilled and if they believe that they can help lessen the financial stress on their families which is a legitimate concern of them, they should be allowed to do so unless the society is willing to take care of the financial costs, whatever they may be. The fact is that many patients have a legal right to decline treatment but the hospital has the final authority to decide whether to stop treatment or not. Ethically, this could be a violation of the patient’s rights as a citizen because he is not being allowed to exercise a right granted by the law. The hospitals argue that patients may be too depressed to decide what’s best for them. Even though mental incapacity is usually used as a reason to transfer decision making authority from the patient, we rarely hear about depression being used as a reason to take away decision making authority from an individual.

Thus, we should grant a right to the patients to remove life support system if they are living under extremely distressful circumstance and have almost no chance of becoming independent in life. This is because all they are left with is dignity and they should have the right to end their life with dignity rather than continue living with guilt and mental anguish in additional to physical hardships.

Reference

Ghose, Tia. Paralyzed accident victim fights for right to die. 28 November 2010. 6 December 2011 <http://www.jsonline.com/features/health/110948384.html>.