I created a questionnaire of ten questions to take a sample of the public, five young men, five young women, five mature men and five mature women. I choose this sample as I believe there is some confusion about euthanasia and this sample will achieve varied results. I chose two age groups (stratified sampling) because the adults will have well formulated opinions on the subject and the young people will have very strong feelings on the subject as young people do about topical issues. As well as this to split it into male and female so that it may show how gender affects views. Different questions were used to acquire different bits of information. Questions one, two, three and seven were all testing the public’s knowledge of euthanasia. Question three asks the public to state places where they think passive euthanasia or assisted suicide are legal and then comparing what they said to what I found out through secondary research. Then I was able to show how much the public knew.
This question on reflection I do not think was very well designed because it makes it all more complicated in the long-term, it should have just been they say places where they think euthanasia is legal and I mark them right if they mention places where euthanasia is legal.
There are two questions that are all about religion and are there to help with secondary question one. The rest of the questions are about who wants and needs euthanasia and when it is permissible, so as to reflect their opinions on euthanasia. In the original pilot (as shown in Source A) there was an 11th question that asked if they person would gave a more in depth interview at a later date but that would contradict my original thoughts to keep the questionnaire anonymous so that question was dismissed before the final copy. I think on the whole my research has presented what I wanted to find out and in fact given me extra in some cases but in others it has not worked so well mostly. The question on religion is not very representative because I mostly have answers from Christians and atheists, only one Buddhist and one Muslim, because there are not many people of other religions in this area but hopefully that is where the secondary research will help.
Is the Euthanasia decision influenced by religious beliefs?
S
ource C shows that different religions have different views regarding euthanasia this is backed up by data retrieved from the Questionnaire. It is not a total proof because this being a predominately white area I was hard pushed to find people from other religions other than Christianity, so the questionnaire only really backs the Christian and atheist viewpoint information up.
These are different religion’s and belief group’s viewpoints on Euthanasia according to Contemporary Moral Issues:
Christian View - The Bible teaches that all life is sacred and comes from God. Is obvious from the Bible verse (Ecclesiastes 3: 1-4) that human beings were not meant to choose when they die,
‘For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time top pluck up what is planted.’
Muslim View - The Qur’an says that Allah created all life. Life is sacred and everything belongs to Allah, this verse (Qur’an, Surah 6: 151) shows this,
‘Do not take life which God has made sacred except in the course of justice.’
Humanist View – The quality of life and respect for personal freedom leads to the belief that people should have the right to choose a painless and dignified death.
Source E is all about the coming in of a new law where doctors may have to be responsible for removing feeding from a person in a Persistent Vegetative State (henceforward known as PVS) thus being responsible for their death. Doctors from both Muslim and Christian beliefs have both said that they will refuse to obey the law even if they face prosecution and even a jail sentence.
Source D flags up another commonly used religiously viewed argument: the moral distinction between actions that cause death (active euthanasia) and omissions (passive euthanasia), which cause death as there is a highly viewed morally distinction between these two categories. Also ‘the sanctity of life’, saying that life has a special value and must not be destroyed. Similarly the humanists believe that life is special to but if a person has decided that their life has lost its meaning or value their decision should be respected.
My questionnaire questions regarding this secondary question show that five out of the six who ticked yes to the question ‘Does only God have the right to give and take life?’ went on to put Christianity as their religion and the other one person was Muslim. Similarly 71% of the people who put Christianity as their religion put that only god had the right to give and take life. From the graphs below it is clear that not everyone who belongs to a religion believes that only God has the right to give and take life. This may be due to many things but one thing I know that has changed the way I feel on this topic is how religions are changing to become more adept to the modern world.
Religious beliefs do affect a person’s view on a subject but their view is not just affected by their religion and that the views of the said religion can be out-weighed by other factors and thus do not have the same viewpoint that their religion says they should have.
Should people be forced to stay alive?
T
here is lots of evidence and arguments for this question. Source E investigates the legal problems of being allowed to die by living wills, indicating that the sufferer should be forced to stay alive. It talks of how relatives can give the word for someone, who can not decided for themselves to die, but how these relatives may be beneficiaries of the will and so may not be doing it for merciful purposes. Thus people in such states should be forced to stay alive for fear of fraud.
My primary research questionnaire flagged up other arguments of what the public think if people should be forced to stay alive.
When people were asked should living wills be honoured the majority said yes however when they were asked if one of their relatives were in a PVS would they have given permission for feeding to be removed only 15% said yes, 50% said unsure and the remaining 35% said no. This conflicts what they said earlier somewhat, although I can sympathise that not many people will know what they would do in such a situation without actually being in it.
Source D presents a commonly used argument against Euthanasia, ‘the slippery slope’ argument. It states that if voluntary euthanasia were permitted then so would follow involuntary euthanasia i.e. if people are allowed to have help in suicide then following would be people taking the choice for someone with no clear indication that it is wanted, much like Adolf Hitler’s regime against the Jews. Indicating that everyone should be forced to stay alive for the sake of the rest of society.
Source B covers briefly how the relatives feel when one of their close family is about to undergo active euthanasia, on the whole they do not feel happy with said persons decision. Implying that people should be forced to stay alive for the sake of their relatives and to protect them from emotional harm.
Overall I believe that people should not be forced to stay alive on the basis that if their life is in dire straights and it is their decision and their decision should be respected. Furthermore that if after evaluation a person who cannot make up their own mind, has little chance of recovery. Then under decision of relatives and doctors the sufferer should be administered passive euthanasia.
Who wants and needs Euthanasia?
T
he public believe that the most likely people to want euthanasia are terminally ill patients and patients with distressing psychological conditions, 44% of all given answers in this question went to these two categories over elderly and painful non-terminal illnesses. Clearly showing that the public believe that these two groups of people are the most likely to want euthanasia due to their condition.
Source B is a biography of how one lady Mrs Z went to a special clinic in Zürich to end her life and the details of the day of her last moments. From this we can extract quotes that tell us something about who goes there, thus who also may want euthanasia. ‘22 terminally ill Britons have spent their final moments’, shows that a fair number who come are terminally ill, common with public belief, However it does not quote figures of other patients so we can discern no more.
Source F is about a couple of case studies from Oregon, USA of people receiving physician-assisted suicide under the Death with Dignity Act. It also says how 20% of people committing suicide there had a non-terminal illness called motor-neurone disease, but that the majority had a terminal form of cancer. The article also states how and who it might be provided to if it were legalised in the UK. It reads that it would only be provided to people in ‘unbearable pain’ with ‘less than six months to live’ which rules out a large proportion of those who may want to end their life. This source also provides some enlightenment about the type of people who went in for the assisted suicide in Oregon; it said the patients were, more often than not, college graduates, better educated than the majority, similarly there was commonly a long history of independence and self-reliance.
Conclusion
T
here is a great deal of evidence saying that euthanasia can be morally right or wrong, often depending on the situation. For example in the case of Tony Bland (Source E), who was in a PVS, was able to die peacefully, obviously the doctors thought it morally tolerable to do so. On the other hand in my own experiences, my Grandmother who had been suffering of terrible illnesses for 4 years and at 87 was not permitted to undergo any type of euthanasia.
In my questionnaire there were two very similar questions; one was asking about what condition people may want euthanasia and the other asking that person if it was permissible in any situation, thus showing me their opinion and if they knew much about what they were talking about. In one situation someone ticked that all of the noted situation’s patients may want suicide but when asked if permissible he only said that only in the cases of PVSs and terminally ill people was it permissible.
One thing that has swung me towards belief that euthanasia is morally wrong is what my religion says Christianity. The Bible says ‘Thou shalt not kill’, Exodus 20:13, the doctors do not have the right to play God (Source B). It is similar to the argument used against Capital Punishment; if the state kills it becomes as bad as a criminal and worse shall follow.
On the contrary, Source A has showed me that it can be quick, peaceful, in your own way and at your own time. In the clinic in Zürich they take a whole day for one patient so they can do what they want for the day and be in a state of happiness when they depart. It is much like the charity ‘Wish upon a star’ where terminally ill children are given the one dream before they die. Mrs Z in a state of pure bliss, ‘she was so enthusiastic, she was so happy, and the she died’.
Furthermore Source C’s definition of euthanasia was enough to make me feel more comfortable about the idea of euthanasia, it originally meant, ‘gentle and easy death’. Likewise later on it talks about how if it were to be utilised how it could work. This is also talked about in Source F; it says that it would only be provided to those with ‘less than six months to live and in unbearable pain’. Source C says that if it were ever to work there would have to be safeguards and criteria such as, ‘someone of sound mind and judgement, after having counselling and preventing pressure, the involvement of a panel of doctors and no reasonable hope of recovery’.
Evaluation
‘A PRS is only as good as the research behind it’.
My PRS has been successful, on the whole, although if I were to do it again there are many things I could have improved on.
Development of Hypothesis and Secondary Questions
It was difficult to decide upon a topic as there is such a varied range of topics available, so in the end I settled on euthanasia a bit more half-heartedly than I would have hoped. At the start I did not have my full will behind it. Once I had chosen I found it easier, when formulating a hypothesis there were two main routes the arguments could stem from; should it be legalised, or the morally acceptable prospective. In developing secondary questions I originally had four, but through out the course of my research I came to realise that the last of them; where is euthanasia legal now, had no argument, it was just pure fact and would not contribute to the answer to the hypothesis so was redundant, thus I dismissed it to concentrate on the others.
My Secondary Research
My number of sources was few and far between, I chose a source from each type of source to get a variety of groups and arguments. I needed to have more sources; it would have given me more to talk about and helped me find other more interesting and subtle arguments to put across. Due to lack of reasonable arguments my whole PRS has suffered, still though upholding and saying what I have found out. I needed to acquire more of each type of sources to develop a wide range to talk about. Newspaper and magazine articles are the most unreliable type source because of political backgrounds to the writing, also and date of issue; a lot can change on a scene in just a few months. The article from the web is also unreliable as it is possible for anyone to publish anything on the web without reasonable assumption or evidence especially if it were statistics.
My Primary Research
My primary research consisted of a questionnaire asked to twenty people of two age groups and sexes. It did not really achieve what I had hoped it would achieve due to the local are being ethnically biased. It would have best been used to certify if the public where aware of everything about euthanasia, but as it happens I did not have a secondary question regarding the publics knowledge of euthanasia thus rendering a few of the questions obsolete, nevertheless I managed to work some of it into my answers exploring if people should be forced to stay alive. When I decided on a sample I decide for five for each group; young male and young female, mature male and mature female. In doing this I thought I would talk about different age group’s answers differ between them but then I realised that it was impossible to uncover any trends with so few in each group and that talking about why they might differ may be going off the subject somewhat.
The Write up
In writing up the secondary questions and conclusion I found that after talking about all of my sources and what I could draw from them, it still felt that they were lacked something. There wasn’t enough factual information; they were dull and boring to attempt to read without any images apart from graphs. In the remaining time I had I managed to go back and find a suitable image to make my secondary questions all the more pleasing on the eye and even used them as a stimulus in places.
Bibliography and Appendix
When I was collecting my sources I was careless and didn’t properly collect the data needed for my Bibliography such as author and date of publication. So I had to go round rediscovering all of my sources which took up a lot of time.
Bibliography/Appendix Contents
- Pilot Questionnaire
- Questionnaire Results
- Craig Donnally
Issues Series volume 102: The Ethics of Euthanasia, Independence Education, 2005
- Joe Jenkins
Contemporary Moral Issues, Heinemann, 2002
- British Humanist association, 2006
A Humanist discussion...EUTHANASIA [online], www.humanism.org.uk/site/cms/contentviewarticle.asp?article=1232&splash=yes
Accessed: 8th Jan. 2008
- Steve Doughty,
‘Living-will law could put frail lives at risk, warn doctors’, The Daily Mail
29th Sep. 2007
- Joe Revill
‘Death on Doctor’s orders’, The Observer
5th Dec. 2004
