Euthanasia and the Quality of Life

Euthanasia and the Quality of Life

Euthanasia, also known as mercy killing, is the act of putting to death painlessly or allowing to die, as by withholding extreme medical measures, a person suffering from an incurable, especially a painful disease or condition. It has become a great topic for debate, which sides are often very divided on the issue. There have been many arguments for and against euthanasia, both making cases for why their train of thought is the right way to go. It is agree upon that euthanasia involves decisions which have the effect of shortening life. This is also limited to a medical context in that euthanasia is only the shortening of life by doctors and not others such as relatives. Lastly euthanasia is seen that death would benefit the patient and they would be better of dead then alive. Another form of euthanasia, is known as physician-assisted suicide. This is a physician providing medications or other means to a patient with the understanding that the patient intends to use them to commit suicide. The debate on euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is if it is morally acceptable for a physician to take the life of an competent, terminally ill patient who ask for it, or a physician to assist the patient in taking their own life?

Euthanasia was first considered to mean "good death," but it has evolved into death that is free of anxiety and pain, usually constituting the use of medication. Primarily euthanasia is used to end one's life in order to keep them from suffering. There are two types of euthanasia, active and passive. Passive euthanasia is avoiding great measures to extend life when death is upon a victim because of an incurable or terminal illness. It is not to speed up death but to avoid long, extended pain and suffering. The most common form of passive euthanasia is the withdrawal of medical treatments. An example of this would be a doctor who turns off a patient's ventilator or who removes the feeding tube from a patient's mouth. On the other hand, active euthanasia is an intervention by someone else to end the suffering person's life. Active Euthanasia can be either voluntary or involuntary. It is voluntary when a terminally ill patient is suffering and makes a persistent request for assistance in dying. Involuntary active euthanasia is when there is an intervention to kill someone who has a terminal illness and is incapable of making his or her own request to die. This happens in the case of babies, young children, mentally incompetent people or someone whose consciousness is impaired and not able to give this request.

Even though euthanasia is sometimes thought to be the best situation for the patient who may be suffering or incoherent, it is still a crime classified as murder in many countries such as the United States. However this only applies to active euthanasia as opposed to passive. Since