Can Euthanasia be justified?

Euthanasia is the act of deliberately causing somebody to die gently and without pain, especially when they are suffering from a painful incurable disease; for the benefit of the person. Most people think unbearable pain is the main reason people seek euthanasia, but some surveys in the USA and the Netherlands showed that less than a third of requests for euthanasia were because of severe pain. There are many problems of knowledge we come across when searching for the truth:  How do we know if its right or wrong? Is it morally acceptable? Should it be Legalized?

  • On what ground does someone make the decision for euthanasia/who makes decision, the individual, the family in some cases, gov or god etc? on what ground – logical, social (religion).
  • The individual should decide about its life or death if he/she can. He has the right to die in dignity and without pain because it is a human right. Ethically, who should take the decision, people with more ‘power’ like gov? the reason we don’t know who should decide, is because everyone thinks differently  (the government thinks strategically, family thinks emotionally, religious through faith etc). Different age groups will also have different viewpoints about the decision,…because they belong to another generation: the government will think in terms of money
  • It  might want to make the decision because it will lower the cost of keeping them alive and the equipment could be used in better circumstances.
  • The Decision depends on the values and the paradigms and then it will not be the same depending on  the culture/religion. Emotions affect our capacity to be reasonably. Religion can affect the decision because God says that you can’t kill anyone and God makes the decision about who dies and who survives.

Our survey shows that all the people between the ages of 17 and 18 said that if the person in question is to decide because it is a human right to decide when you die. However, about 60% of them said that if they are not capable of making the decision themselves, the family should decide in their place. And the other 40% said that the government should decide

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Is it valid to judge other peoples decisions related to Euthanasia? And how do we know whose premises are true?

  • When looking at the problem of knowledge of ‘is it valid to judge’, we need to know how we test validity. How can we know we are right and someone else is wrong?
  • Ethical, Political and Social issues will have different premises when making a decision of whether it should be justified, however, the slippery slope argument always arises, because if It was to be legalized, you could not totally control it. Therefore, it is not justified. A lot ...

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