Pro Euthanasia, Essay Example

The Terminally Ill Patient’s Right to Die

Bernie was a real, simple, family-oriented man in his 80’s who was accomplished and knew it, but his confidence was based on commendable personal and professional achievements. Family man, teacher, politician, deep sea diver, author, athlete– Bernie had done it all. How many people compete in the Olympics during their lifetime, as Bernie did? He had become disillusioned with religion, government, and medicine when he was still a young man. After his wife, Irene, suffered and was humiliated by her cancer before her death in 1994, he took up a rootless life of travelling across the country aimlessly living life to its fullest. When the pain of the sudden-onset stomach cancer occurred and it became clear how bleak the prognosis was, Bernie repeatedly attempted to commit suicide. Fit and accustomed to challenge though he was and despite having no previous depression during his life, Bernie had determined that he wanted to die. During his last attempt, he was resuscitated and gained consciousness long enough to ask, “Why couldn’t you have left me to die in peace?” After considerable pain to Bernie and his family due to the extreme efforts to save Bernie, his body went into multi-system failure. Bernie was finally allowed to die (Sneesby 2-4).

This synopsis of the later years of Bernie’s life is presented in the case study “The Human Face Behind an Ethical Dilemma: Reflecting on Attempted Suicide and Outcomes of a Case Study”. Although Bernie himself was unique, the involuntary stop to euthanization and suicide is not. At any given moment, there are hundreds of thousands of people across the world facing the same dilemma as Bernie– euthanize oneself or bear agonizing pain until all independence is lost and pass away after draining all of the financial resources intended for family. As the Health Sociology Review stated, “euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide were depicted as halting the physical deteriorations associated with terminal illness and thereby redeeming the dying person, by providing them with the opportunity to reclaim the social status lost via their progressive corporeal decline” (McIrnerney 1). The illegal status of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide in America prevents sufferers from dying with dignity and humanity.

Strictly speaking, euthanasia is considered to apply only to suicide assisted by other people. There are also two types: active and passive. Active euthanasia implies using physical force, medication, and other means to end a life, whereas passive euthanasia includes inaction as action, such as the removal of a feeding tube or heavy sedation and so forth.

A consensus of public opinion can normally be reached concerning active euthanasia, because it implies a quick and brutal methodology. Ambroise Paré, a sixteenth century surgeon, was travelling through a city with three fatally wounded soldiers when an old man walked up to him and asked if they had any chance of survival. When Paré told him no, the old man walked up and slit the soldiers’ throats (Stolberg 1). Although a harsh example, this illustrates the widely-held conviction that- where coercion and suggestion are not present- even such a brutal form of euthanasia is preferable to suffering. In the sixteenth-century euthanasia was not merciful, because they did not have the capabilities of the medical professionals today.

With today’s advances in the field of medicine, passive euthanasia is more common. Although phenobarbitone is merely intended for the ease of patients in great pain, patients in the UK who were administered the sedative died within three days on average. The link is most likely not causal, but the drug still affects the fighting-for-your-life capabilities of the patient. This and similar forms of politically-correct euthanasia actually prolong the suffering of the patient and are often made without the patient’s volition. Furthermore, a patient that truly desires to die must do so with the knowledge that he is convicting a person for helping him or must die alone and with a great amount of pain in addition to what he already suffers. In 1800, German doctor Karl Kortum stated his support of euthanasia, because “as they [the terminally ill] approached the end… they gradually lost their senses. Yet a patient would sometimes live on for another forty-eight hours beyond that, with an incessant death-rattle emanating from his or her chest”. He met with mixed reactions when he published the recipe for a self-euthanizing cocktail in the national medical periodical (Stolberg 2).

Although suicide and attempted suicide are not illegal, aiding a suicide in any way (euthanasia) is illegal in most American states and in most countries. However, there has been a recent shift in the international stance on the issue. The UK is considering legalizing euthanasia. Belgium already has. The government also set up a free Life End Information Forum (LEIF) for the support of medical personnel administering the newly-established option for the due care of terminally ill patients (Van Wesemael, Cohen, Onwuteaka-Philipsen, Bilsen, Distelman, and Deliens 3).

Sneesby (2009) explained that “the underpinning rationale behind these policies and guidelines are primarily to uphold the law, respect for the sanctity of life and to protect the legal and moral rights of the healthcare worker” (5).

Those who have determined that they wish to die cannot turn to the government and must find more-painful and less-effective methods. They often use violent methods as shooting themselves, slitting their wrists, walking into heavy traffic, or plummeting from a tall building (Gillon, Johnson, & Campbell 1,4-6). Logically speaking, such extreme methods of death, which are often botched by the individual, cause more physical trauma to the terminally ill patient and more psychological damage to the survivors. The family is left to identify pieces of their loved one and blame themselves for being unable to help. If the attempt is unsuccessful, both the patient and their family live with guilt while they must pay for the patient’s care.

Criticisms of euthanasia often target the death of the physical body, but Plessner (1976) and Turner (1984) maintain that a person’s presence in a body is composed of two aspects: the experience body and the external body. The condition of the body is unconsciously associated with the state of the person themselves, i.e. “integrity of the body was considered central to the integrity of the person” (as quoted by McIrnerney 3). (Sneesby 2) This was written specifically of Australian media portrayals of debilitating and/or terminal illness in the 1990’s, but the sociological premise is timeless and global (Gillon 4). In Bernie’s case, as well as various statements made by the terminally ill, one of the main criterion for the desire to die is the dependence upon another person to perform hygienic bodily actions, such as taking a bath or using the toilet (Gillon, Johnson, and Campell 4-5).

In the United States, four out every one hundred thousand people will be murdered each year, but as a society there is more leniency for murderers than caring helpers. Bernie was forced back into life to die immobile in a hospital bed- the very outcome that he had wished to avoid. At that same time, victims of other crimes were waiting for hours in the emergency room, hoping to get just such a room (Sneesby 5-6). Plato wrote that for such pragmatic reasons, the sick should be allowed to die. Thomas More’s Utopia advocated physician-assisted active euthanasia (Masic, Izet, and Mujezinovic 1-2). What hope do these people have for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? They have no dream and no way out, because they live in America.

Works Cited

Gillon, Johnson, and Campbell. “Review of phenobarbitone use for deep terminal sedation in a UK hospice.” Palliative Medicine 24.1 (2010): 100-101. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 21 July 2010.

Masic, Izet, and Adnan Mujezinovic. “Euthanasia.” Materia Socio Medica 20.3 (2008): 161-166. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 21 July 2010.

McInerney, Fran. “Death and the body beautiful: Aesthetics and embodiment in press portrayals of requested death in Australia on the edge of the 21st century.” Health          Sociology Review 16.5 (2007): 384-396. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 July 2010.

Sneesby, Ludmilla. “The human face behind an ethical dilemma: Reflecting on attempted suicide and outcomes of a case study.” International Journal of Palliative Nursing       15.9 (2009): 456-462. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 21 July 2010.

Stolberg, Michael. “Two Pioneers of Euthanasia around 1800.” 19-22. Hastings Center, 2008. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 July 2010.

Van Wesemael, Yanna, Cohen, Onwuteaka-Philipsen, Bilsen, Distelman, and Deliens. “Role and Involvement of Life End Information Forum Physicians in Euthanasia and             Other End-of-Life Care Decisions in Flanders, Belgium.” Health Services Research 44.6 (2009): 2180-2192. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 20 July 2010.