| Euthanasia Essay, Research Paper
Euthanasia
People in the world today are constantly being slammed with problems. There are overpopulated countries, starving children, incurable diseases, and poverty. There are drunk drivers on the road, burglars in our homes, and the homeless are on the streets. No matter how many positive aspects you try to think of in our world, these problems and many more exist. You can try to block them out, or you can strive to make them better. I think one way to make society better is to end euthanasia and physician assisted suicides. I believe that this treatment of life is wrong, and can be solved in other ways.
Depression, dementia, terminal illnesses, and personal reasons are all reasons patients have found to die. They have been relieved of their condition through injection. The option should not even be available. The world today is attempting to help suicidal people, but not in a constructive manner. There are thousands of hospitals and clinics across the world that employ doctors and psychiatrists that specialize in improving the quality of others lives to prevent suicide, and promote emotional stability. Now death is becoming a reasonable and feasible option.
The entirety of the problem of euthanasia and physician assisted suicides is not so much that unhappy people are dying, but that no effort or attempt is being made to make them better. In every case I ve researched, the request for assisted suicide stemmed from depression, anguish, desperation, or fear of abandonment. In other words, terminally ill patients sought assisted suicide for the same reasons that healthy people do. In the same case of healthy people, their suffering could be helped and their longing for death suppressed, by proper use of medicine, love and kindness. The answer to anguish and desperation is not to coldly dispatch these people, but rather to surround them within the bonds of a community that sees to value them (Assisted 5).
Take for example, Janet Adkins. Janet was 54 year old when Dr. Jack Kevorkian assisted her in committing suicide. At the time of her death, she was in the early stages of Alzheimer s Disease, and was not terminally ill. Her own doctor said she had ten years of productive life ahead of her. She never met or spoke with Kevorkian until two days before her death (Death 3). Elaine Goldbaum had financial problems and feared losing her house. Jonathan Grenz was said to be depressed and overwhelmed with grief following his mother s death. Ali Khalili had told his doctor that the quality of his life had been compromised by an anxiety state. Kevorkian assisted them all to die (Death 4). With appropriate treatment and services, many of them would be alive and well today.
My proposal to end this termination of lives is to outlaw it. People have the right to do as they please, but suicide is an action that should be prevented in every way possible, not assisted or encouraged for success. There are a couple of things for which no legal right exists. To people who say that physician-assisted suicide is a “right, I will remind them that there are many things that are not rights. Many of these things that are considered rights are harmful to an individual or society as a whole. Yes, there are cases where society must protect people from themselves, whether from addiction to harmful drugs, alcoholism, or from a depression or other mental disease that aids them in destroying their own lives. Assisted suicides and euthanasia are two rights that people should not have, and the right shouldn t even be considered. If the chance to have them performed was taken away, people would learn to make the best of what they possess, rather than end their own life. Many people aren t strong enough to end their own lives, yet with an IV, and a single button, it becomes an easy mistake.
Rather then assisted suicides, individuals considering this possibility should have available for them extensive treatment and programs to improve their feelings and end their depression. Individuals diagnosed with terminal illnesses should be required to immediately seek psychological help to prevent them from sinking into hopelessness. Many people may not seek these treatments due to the cost, which may worsen their condition of depression. Some sort of insurance should be set up through hospitals to take care of the costs. With this, individuals diagnosed with terminal illnesses and depression won t see assisted suicides to be of cheaper value than treatment to rid them of their ill feelings. Everyone should be given an equal chance at life, and disabled people are being given the option of suicide instead of hope. Many doctors even conclude that lives of people with severe disabilities are not worth saving, solely based on their disabilities (Assisted 3).
There are many problems and obstacles that will come with the banning of assisted suicides and euthanasia. Everyone has a different view on this topic, and many are actually for it, but they are unaware of the unnecessary deaths this has caused. In the Netherlands, a country in which assisted suicide has been widely accepted and practiced for many years and the country often referred to as the model for the United States, a governmental report demonstrates that many people with non terminal disabilities have been killed, and thousands have been killed involuntarily (Assisted 2). . The option of assisted suicide is just too accessible and simple. It can be scheduled and occur within days of contacting a physician, and a human life should not be thrown around in that way.
Life is a privilege. These days, couples are lucky to produce a child with no complications or disabilities. Successful people such as physicians should not be so willing to end others lives with such compliance. Earning a prosperous living through causing death to others is not an honest living, and these people should be considered everything but heroes. One day they may say a life, yet the next they are ending one. Medicine should be focused on improving lives, rather then giving the option of ending them so easily. If euthanasia is made illegal, it will cause people to seek other ways around their discomforts. Death should not be the answer to unhappiness, and the acts of assisted suicides should be unavailable to everyone. If an individual s will to die is so strong, nature will take its course and fate will choose the path.
Chevlen, Eric. Assisted Suicides. March 17, 2001. http://www.eaf.org/orrpt1.htm
Death with Dignity Act. March 17, 2001. http://www.ieetf.org/orrpt2.htm
Humphry, Derek. Supplement to Final Exit. Boston: Norris Lane Printing Co., 2000.
Leone, Daniel A. The Ethics of Euthanasia. New York: Greenhaven Press, 1999.
Woodman, Sue. Last Rights: The Struggle Over the Right to Die. New York: Perseus Books,
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