Discussion Essay        Euthanasia        English

In the last thirty years, Euthanasia has been a very controversial topic, fabricating the battle of human ethics against the Christian morals. There may be certain cases where it is considered as “letting die”, nevertheless it is still basically murder. Through various opinions, evidence and incidents I will debate the statement should Euthanasia be legalized, is it ethical?

The word Euthanasia originated from a Greek word, translated to "easy death," and is often linked with the notorious Dr. Kevorkian “Dr Death”. There are three different types of euthanasia:

What doctors believe to be "letting the patient die," such as taking conscious or unconscious patients off of life support, not reviving the patient in case of a heart failure. The third group is called assisted suicide. This is where Dr. Kevorkian and his suicide machine come into practise, made “popular” by his technique. The machine injects a lethal dosage of a potassium chloride into the "patients’" blood stream, killing them painlessly within ten minutes.

The first type of Euthanasia mentioned above is known as "active voluntary euthanasia." This is where a conscious, mentally capable person, usually with a severe physical illness, loses the motivation to live. Many people say that keeping them alive is just extending the time of death, a cruel punishment. They sometimes ask that life support should be disconnected so that they can die quickly and painlessly. Most doctors are trained to do their best to defeat death, or at least try to delay it as long as possible, but if the patient is desperately ill, and would rather die, the doctor can consult the “hospital ethics committee”, and take the patient off of life support. When doctors are taken to court, they defend themselves by saying, "I didn't kill him, I just let him die." However this is illegal throughout Australia and the rest of the world, but it still is a common incident.

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The second type, "passive voluntary euthanasia," is conducted when patients are terminally ill or in a “vegetable” state. As a result of this, the family decides to take their loved one off of life support. The family may choose to have the patient taken off of life support if they desire, and if the doctors have to obey, it will be done. However there was a case where the doctor said he had a "moral problem" in killing a patient, and so the parents took the doctor to court. The judge ruled that removing life support "would be homicide ...

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