Euthanasia

Euthanasia is a practice of direct killing of a patient by a doctor for the benefit of that person while physician assisted suicide is the act of killing oneself by means of lethal drugs provide by the physician.

The concept of these two practices, the Euthanasia and Physician Assisted suicide is analyzed by Callahan. He provides three arguments in favor of euthanasia. First if we are competent, to have the right to control our body as we fit and to end our life if we choose to do so. He state that “individual has the right  to commit suicide, however committing suicide does not involved anyone else’s help, as euthanasia clearly involves another person. Euthanasia is thus no longer a matter of only self determination but mutual, social decision between two people, the one to be killed and the one doing the killing. Second is the we owed to each other in the name of beneficiaries or charity, to relieve suffering when we can do so. Third is that there is no serious or logical difference between terminating of dying patient, allowing the patient to die, and directly killing a patient by euthanasia. He claims that this argument is wrong, as the lethal disease in some point cannot be cured by the treatment as it only extends the life of a patient and the patient will die with the disease.

According to the U.S. catholic Bishops “to destroy the boundary between healing and killing would mark a radical departure from longstanding legal and radical traditions of our country, posing a threat of unforgivable magnitude to vulnerable members of our society, those who represent the interest of elderly persons with disabilities, and persons with AIDS or other terminal illness are justifiably alarmed when some hasten to confer on them the freedom to be killed”. Euthanasia would be a form of killing but in euthanasia a patient gives his permission to be killed by his physician who is right but knowing that physician’s job/function is to cure and prevent pain and suffering of the patient they should not practice euthanasia. “Doctors must not engage in assisting suicide. They are inheritors of a valuable tradition that inspires public trust. None should be even partly responsible for the erosion of that trust. Nothing that is remotely beneficial to some particular patient in extremis is worth the damage that will be created by the perception that physicians sometimes aid and even abet people in taking their own lives" (Bernard Baumrin, PhD 1998).

In this Article, Callahan said that the concept of this two, the euthanasia and the physician assisted suicide is not just a simply ethical debate rather, they point to fundamental turning points of history. For Callahan, there are three fundamental turning points in these issues. First, the legitimate conditions under which a person can kill themselves. He claims the emergence of this issue is in stark contrast to many other efforts to curtail the reasons why one person can take another's life. A legitimate person can kill a person for a reason. For example, those who are attending funerals of suicides will know this such funerals fell relief that the misery of the life leading up to them has now been relieved.

Another is meaning and limits of self-determination. As for self-determination, Callahan claims that such notion simply leads to an “idiosyncratic view of the good life”. Self-determination or suicide is the view of person who is in agony as the way to a good life. As a person who is in misery and suffering, he will find way to scape all this. For Example, a father who has a terminal illness has been bed ridden in the hospital. As he is the father, he is the main source of income of his family. The treatment cost is a big one that led to his sons and daughters to stop in elementary and work to pay for their father’s treatment. To be a father you can’t take this happening in your life. As you know that your terminal disease couldn’t is cure and you will die soon. This will lead to the father to commit suicide, as his view it a way to end the suffering of his family.

Still another, the claim such issues make upon the institution of medicine. For Callahan, forcing a physician to make his talents and skills available to achieve a patient’s private vision of good life is simply wrong, rather he believes that a doctor should be available to “promote and preserve human health”. According to Callahan euthanasia and physician assisted suicide is a social not individual as it requires assistance of physicians. Since a physician-patient relationship had the greatest effect on patient engagement to the hospital activities (Health Services Research 2011). Since the physician- patient relationship is bind with great relationship and they have greater confidentiality.  Physician may influence the decisions of the patient and engaged to the euthanasia and physician assisted suicide. Like what I said above a physician should not take the patient’s life as it is not his duty. Even if it is for the patients good, killing him is not the way to relieve the suffering of the patient. A physician should promote health care and trust not fear to their patients.

. In the survey conducted by Hall, Trachtenberg, and Dugan, there was disagreement by 58% of the participants, and agreement by only 20% that legalizing euthanasia would cause them to trust their personal physician less. The remainders were neutral. These only indicate that not all patients agree to the euthanasia and physician assisted suicide, as it will lessen the trust of patient to his physician. Mark hall stated that “Our study shows that only about 20% of people believe they would trust their physician less if euthanasia were legalized”. For example euthanasia or physician assisted suicide is being legalized, a patient has a terminal disease. The patient lying in his bed would be worried and thinking if his physicians would kill him. The trust for all physicians would decrease as they can stop the treatment and kill patient to relieve its suffering and pain. The fear would administer the mind of patients since this act controls the patient. Legalizing the physician assisted suicide would not help the curing of the terminal disease as it would not downhill course of the illness.

Callahan concluded We cannot allow self determination to run free, rather doctors should focus on comforting and reduce pain and anxiety and physicians should practice caring and compassion, instead of death. For me, physicians should do they’re duties as it is they’re obligation to treat patient as a human. They should increase their trust to their patient to have a strong relationship to their patient and to decrease the fear of people in the hospitals and doctors.

Child Euthanasia

   Child euthanasia is the practice of killing infants with defects, hateful and disabled.  Singer (1993) stated that when the life of an infant will be so miserable as not to be worth living, from the internal perspective of the being who will lead that life, both the 'prior existence' and the 'total' version of utilitarianism entail that, if there are no 'extrinsic' reasons for keeping the infant alive - like the feelings of the parents — it is better that the child should be helped to die without further suffering. A new born life would be killed by his defects? An infant doesn’t know about the outside, his innocent mind doesn’t know about euthanasia. It is not morally right to kill an infant just for his disabilities, defects, and being ill. An infant exist for a reason. That he has a role to this world. His disabilities are a gift. The religion teaches us not to kill nor harm other as it is violating the Ten Commandments. Singer argues that disabled infants may be killed ethically because they are not sentient beings. Sentient or not, babies with disabilities grow up to be children and then adults with disabilities (Bristo 1999). This person might live his life to a doctor not to his parents, as a study shows that the disabled people valued or has the highest perception about life than people that are abled. The abled people have the greater percentage of committing suicide than disabled people. Parents with a disable child will be in shock and will go in certain adjustment and will realize that this child makes their family stronger, as they passed the circumstance of having a defective child. To be able to pass this circumstance parents need the best information on how to develop this individual into an independent adult.