Euthanasia Outline

Euthanasia:  the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit. (The key word here is â€Å"intentional†. If death is not intended, it is not an act of euthanasia)   †¢ Voluntary euthanasia:  When the person who is killed has requested to be killed. †¢ Non-voluntary:  When the person who is killed made no request and gave no consent. †¢ Involuntary euthanasia:  When the person who is killed made an expressed wish to the contrary. Assisted suicide:  Someone provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this purpose. When it is a doctor who helps another person to kill themselves it is called â€Å"physician assisted suicide. †Ã‚   †¢ Euthanasia By Action:  Intentionally causing a person's death by performing an action such as by giving a lethal injection. †¢ Euthanasia By Omission:  Intent ionally causing death by not providing necessary and ordinary (usual and customary) care or food and water. 1. Unbearable pain as the reason for euthanasiaProbably the major argument in favor of euthanasia is that the person involved is in great pain. Today, advances are constantly being made in the treatment of pain and, as they advance, the case for euthanasia/assisted-suicide is proportionally weakened. Euthanasia advocates stress the cases of unbearable pain as reasons for euthanasia,  but then they soon include a  Ã¢â‚¬Å"drugged† state. I guess that is in case virtually no uncontrolled pain cases can be found – then they can say those people are drugged into a no-pain state but they need to be euthanasiaed from such a state because it is not dignified.See the opening for the slippery slope? How do you measure â€Å"dignity†? No – it will be euthanasia â€Å"on demand†. The pro-euthanasia folks have already started down the slope. They are e ven now not stoping with â€Å"unbearable pain† – they are alrady including this â€Å"drugged state† and other circumstances. Nearly all pain can be eliminated and – in those rare cases where it can't be eliminated – it can still be reduced significantly if proper treatment is provided. It is a national and international scandal that so many people do not get adequate pain control. But killing is not the answer to that scandal.The solution is to mandate better education of health care professionals on these crucial issues, to expand access to health care, and to inform patients about their rights as consumers. Everyone – whether it be a person with a life-threatening illness or a chronic condition – has the right to pain relief. With modern advances in pain control, no patient should ever be in excruciating pain. However, most doctors have never had a course in pain management so they're unaware of what to do. If a patient who is und er a doctor's care is in excruciating pain, there's definitely a need to find a different doctor.But that doctor should be one who will control the pain, not one who will kill the patient. There are board certified specialists in pain management who will not only help alleviate physical pain but are skilled in providing necessary support to deal with emotional suffering and depression that often accompanies physical pain. 2. Demanding a â€Å"right to commit suicide†Ã‚  Probably the second most common point pro-euthanasia people bring up is this so-called â€Å"right. † But what we are talking about is not giving a right to the person who is killed, but to the person who does the killing. In other words, euthanasia is  not about the right to die.It's about the right to kill. Euthanasia is not about giving rights to the person who dies but, instead, is about changing the law and public policy so that doctors, relatives and others can directly and intentionally end ano ther person's life. People do have the power to commit suicide. Suicide and attempted suicide are not criminalized. Suicide is a tragic, individual act. Euthanasia is not about a private act. It's about letting one person facilitate the death of another. That is a matter of very public concern since it can lead to tremendous abuse, exploitation and erosion of care for the most vulnerable people among us. . Should people be forced to stay alive? No. And neither the law nor medical ethics requires that â€Å"everything be done† to keep a person alive. Insistence, against the patient's wishes, that death be postponed by every means available is contrary to law and practice. It would also be cruel and inhumane. There comes a time when continued attempts to cure are not compassionate, wise, or medically sound. That's where hospice, including in-home hospice care, can be of such help. That is the time when all efforts should be placed on making the patient's remaining time comforta ble.Then, all interventions should be directed to alleviating pain and other symptoms as well as to the provision of emotional and spiritual support for both the patient and the patient's loved ones. 14th through 20th Century English Common Law (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg – opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. ) â€Å"More specifically, for over 700 years, the Anglo American common law tradition has punished or otherwise disapproved of both suicide and assisting suicide. † [pic] 19th Century United States (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v.Glucksberg – opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. ) That suicide remained a grievous, though nonfelonious, wrong is confirmed by the fact that colonial and early state legislatures and courts did not retreat from prohibiting assisting suicide. Swift, in his early 19th century treatise on the laws of Connecticut, stated that â€Å"[i]f one counsels another to commit suicide, and the other by reason of the advice kills himself, the advisor is guilty of murder as principal. † 2 Z. Swift, A Digest of the Laws of the State of Connecticut 270 (1823). This was the well established common law view, see In re Joseph G. 34 Cal. 3d 429, 434-435, 667 P. 2d 1176, 1179 (1983); Commonwealth v. Mink, 123 Mass. 422, 428 (1877) (â€Å"`Now if the murder of one's self is felony, the accessory is equally guilty as if he had aided and abetted in the murder'†) (quoting Chief Justice Parker's charge to the jury in Commonwealth v. Bowen, 13 Mass. 356 (1816)), as was the similar principle that the consent of a homicide victim is â€Å"wholly immaterial to the guilt of the person who cause[d] [his death],† 3 J. Stephen, A History of the Criminal Law of England 16 (1883); see 1 F. Wharton, Criminal Law  §Ã‚ §451-452 (9th ed. 1885); Martin v.Commonwealth, 184 Va. 1009, 1018-1019, 37 S. E. 2d 43, 47 (19 46) († `The right to life and to personal security is not only sacred in the estimation of the common law, but it is inalienable' â€Å"). And the prohibitions against assisting suicide never contained exceptions for those who were near death. Rather, â€Å"[t]he life of those to whom life ha[d] become a burden–of those who [were] hopelessly diseased or fatally wounded–nay, even the lives of criminals condemned to death, [were] under the protection of law, equally as the lives of those who [were] in the full tide of life's enjoyment, and anxious to continue to live. Blackburn v. State, 23 Ohio St. 146, 163 (1872); see Bowen, supra, at 360 (prisoner who persuaded another to commit suicide could be tried for murder, even though victim was scheduled shortly to be executed). [pic] 1828 – Earliest American statute explicitly to outlaw assisting suicide (Excerpt is from the U. S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg – opinion writte n by Chief Justice Rehnquist. ) The earliest American statute explicitly to outlaw assisting suicide was enacted in New York in 1828, Act of Dec. 10, 1828, ch. 20,  §4, 1828 N.Y. Laws 19 (codified at 2 N. Y. Rev. Stat. pt. 4, ch. 1, tit. 2, art. 1,  §7, p. 661 (1829)), and many of the new States and Territories followed New York's example. Marzen 73-74. Between 1857 and 1865, a New York commission led by Dudley Field drafted a criminal code that prohibited â€Å"aiding† a suicide and, specifically, â€Å"furnish[ing] another person with any deadly weapon or poisonous drug, knowing that such person intends to use such weapon or drug in taking his own life. † Id. , at 76-77. [pic] 20th Century United States (Excerpt is from the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the 1997 Washington v. Glucksberg – opinion written by Chief Justice Rehnquist. ) Though deeply rooted, the States' assisted suicide bans have in recent years been reexamined and, generally, reaffirmed. Beca use of advances in medicine and technology, Americans today are increasingly likely to die in institutions, from chronic illnesses. President's Comm'n for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research, Deciding to Forego Life Sustaining Treatment 16-18 (1983).Public concern and democratic action are therefore sharply focused on how best to protect dignity and independence at the end of life, with the result that there have been many significant changes in state laws and in the attitudes these laws reflect. Many States, for example, now permit â€Å"living wills,† surrogate health care decisionmaking, and the withdrawal or refusal of life sustaining medical treatment. See Vacco v. Quill, post, at 9-11; 79 F. 3d, at 818-820; People v. Kevorkian, 447 Mich. 436, 478-480, and nn. 53-56, 527 N. W. 2d 714, 731-732, and nn. 53-56 (1994).At the same time, however, voters and legislators continue for the most part to reaffirm their States' prohibition s on assisting suicide. [pic] 1920 The book â€Å"Permitting the Destruction of Life not Worthy of Life† was published. In this book, authors Alfred Hoche, M. D. , a professor of psychiatry at the University of Freiburg, and Karl Binding, a professor of law from the University of Leipzig, argued that patients who ask for â€Å"death assistance† should, under very carefully controlled conditions, be able to obtain it from a physician. This book helped support involuntary euthanasia by Nazi Germany. [pic] 935 The Euthanasia Society of England was formed to promote euthanasia. [pic]1939 Nazi Germany (From â€Å"The History Place† web site) â€Å"In October of 1939 amid the turmoil of the outbreak of war Hitler ordered widespread â€Å"mercy killing† of the sick and disabled. Code named â€Å"Aktion T 4,† the Nazi euthanasia program to eliminate â€Å"life unworthy of life† at first focused on newborns and very young children. Midwives and doct ors were required to register children up to age three who showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms included on a questionnaire from the Reich Health Ministry. â€Å"The Nazi euthanasia program quickly expanded to include older disabled children and adults. Hitler's decree of October, 1939, typed on his personal stationery and back dated to Sept. 1, enlarged ‘the authority of certain physicians to be designated by name in such manner that persons who, according to human judgment, are incurable can, upon a most careful diagnosis of their condition of sickness, be accorded a mercy death. ‘† [pic]1995 Australia's Northern Territory approved a euthanasia bill It went into effect in 1996 and was overturned by the Australian Parliament in 1997. [pic] 1998 U. S. tate of Oregon legalizes assisted suicide [pic] 1999 Dr. Jack Kevorkian sentenced to a 10-25 year prison term for giving a lethal injection to Thomas Youk whose death was shown on the â€Å"60 Minutes† television program. [pic] 2000 The Netherlands legalizes euthanasia. [pic] 2002 Belgium legalizes euthanasia. [pic] 2008 U. S. state of Washington legalizes assisted suicide Arguments For Euthanasia: †¢ It provides a way to relieve extreme pain †¢ It provides a way of relief when a person's quality of life is low †¢ Frees up medical funds to help other people †¢ It is another case of freedom of choiceArguments Against Euthanasia: †¢ Euthanasia devalues human life †¢ Euthanasia can become a means of health care cost containment †¢ Physicians and other medical care people should not be involved in directly causing death †¢ There is a â€Å"slippery slope† effect that has occurred where euthanasia has been first been legalized for only   the terminally ill and later laws are changed to allow it for other people or to be done non-voluntarily. Places in the World Where Euthanasia or Assisted Suicide are Leg al Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg , Oregon and Washington ORGANIZATIONS AGAINST EUTHANASIA Canada Compassionate Healthcare Network (BC, Canada)†¢ Euthanasia Prevention Coalition (Ontario, Canada) †¢ First International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (2007) US †¢ International Task Force on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide †¢ ADAPT (People with disabilities) (Illinois, USA) †¢ Nightingale Alliance †¢ The Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics †¢ List of Disability Groups Opposing Assisted Suicide †¢ The Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund †¢ True Compassion Advocates †¢ Californians Against Assisted Suicide (2007) †¢ CURE (Citizens United Resisting Euthanasia) †¢ Views on Euthanasia (Sponsored by CURE) Pro-life Movement Increasingly Takes on Assisted Suicide †¢ Black Americans for Life †¢ Wisconsin Right to Life Assisted Suicide/Euthanasia Page †¢ Pro-Life Colleges and Seminaries †¢ Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund †¢ TASH's Resolution Opposing the Legalization of Assisted Suicide †¢ Disability Groups Opposing Physician Assisted Suicide †¢ List of Some Groups Opposing Physician Assisted Suicide †¢ Largest U. S. Organization of Latin Americans Opposes Assisted Suicide (2006) †¢ Symposium on Opposing Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (2007) †¢ Lifeissues. net's Euthanasia Articles (2008) †¢ Life TreeUK †¢ Care Not Killing †¢ First Do No Harm (By Doctors in the UK) †¢ ALERT (UK) †¢ British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life World †¢ World Youth Alliance supports the Duke of Luxembourg’s Decision to Veto Euthanasia Legislation (2008)   †¢ International Euthanasia Symposium Held in Virginia, USA (2009) †¢ Second International Symposium on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide, Virginia, USA (2009) †¢ First International Symposium on Euthanasia an d Assisted Suicide, Toronto, Canada (2007) World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life †¢ ORGANIZATIONS FOR EUTHANASIA-Right To Die Organizations †¢