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Euthanasia is the deliberate killing of a person for the benefit of that person.
In most cases euthanasia is carried out because the person who dies asks for it, but there are cases called
euthanasia where a person can't make such a request.
A person who undergoes euthanasia is usually terminally ill, but there are other situations in which some
people want euthanasia.
is it ever right for another person to end the life of a terminally ill patient who is in severe pain or enduring
other suffering?
if euthanasia is sometimes right, under what circumstances is it right?
is there any moral difference between killing someone and letting them die?
At the heart of the ethical and religious arguments over euthanasia are the different ideas that people have
of the meaning and value of human existence, and of whether human beings have the right to decide
issues of life and death for themselves.
Some people think that euthanasia shouldn't be allowed even if it was morally right, because it would be
abused and used as a cover for murder.
Mercy killing
Very often people call euthanasia 'mercy killing', perhaps thinking of it for someone who is terminally ill
and suffering prolonged, unbearable pain. The word euthanasia comes from the Greek and means easy
death.
Terminally ill people can have their quality of life severely damaged by physical conditions such as
incontinence, nausea and vomiting, breathlessness, paralysis, difficulty in swallowing...
Psychological factors that cause people to think of euthanasia include depression, fear of loss of control or
of dignity, feeling a burden, or dislike of being dependent.
A question of rights
Does an individual who has no hope of recovery have the right to decide how and when to end their life?
They add that as suicide is not a crime, euthanasia should not be a crime.
Other opponents fear that if euthanasia was made legal, the laws regulating it would be abused, and people
would be killed who didn't really want to die.
Euthanasia is illegal in Britain. To kill another person deliberately is murder, even if the other person asks
you to kill them.
It is also a criminal offence in Britain, punishable by 14 years' imprisonment, to assist, aid or counsel
somebody in relation to taking their own life.
Changing attitudes
The Times (24 January 2007) reported that, according to the 2007 British Social Attitudes survey, 80% of
the public said they wanted the law changed to give terminally ill patients the right to die with a doctor's
help.
In the same survey, 45% supported giving patients with non-terminal illnesses the option of euthanasia.
"A majority" was opposed to relatives being involved in a patient's death.
Euthanasia opponents don't believe that it is possible to draft laws and guidelines that will prevent the
abuse of euthanasia.
Those in favour of euthanasia think that there is no reason why euthanasia can't be controlled by proper
regulation, but even they fear that regulations won't deal with people who want to implement euthanasia
for bad motives.
This is little different from the position with any crime. The law prohibits murder, but that doesn't stop
bad people committing murders.
Nonetheless, people worry that whatever regulations are put into place they won't stop, particularly
vulnerable, patients being pressured to choose death when they would rather live for a few more weeks.
It's hard to think that creating a structure to regulate euthanasia will have a worse result than not having
any regulations at all.
Since euthanasia will continue to take place, even though it's illegal, it would surely be better to make it
legal and regulate it so as to minimize abuse.
A similar argument was used as part of the case for making abortion legal. It's not that convincing if it's
the only argument.
However, vulnerable patients might be better protected if there were set procedures and rules that had to
be followed for euthanasia than they are at present.
Indeed a patient who feared that they were under pressure to decide in favour of euthanasia would be able
to gain help and support by initiating the formal procedures involved in regulated euthanasia - something
that they cannot do now.
Elements of regulation
For safeguards to be meaningful and effective, they have to involve investigations of the patient's psyche,
his family dynamics and the financial implications of his death, among with more obvious things such as
the patient's medical condition, and the likely course of the disease.
In order to ensure that requests are properly considered, both by the patient, the family, and the
authorities, regulations need to build in a time-period for reconsideration.
Proper regulation must also make sure that a patient was receiving good palliative care before a request
for euthanasia is considered.
Although the procedures outlined above are time-consuming and expensive, that does not mean that they
are impractical.
The US state of Oregon legalised physician assisted suicide in 1998. During the first three years only
around 2 people a month used this to end their lives. This was partly because of the severe conditions that
had to be satisfied before a request for euthanasia could be granted:
About 30% of patients who started the process died before it was completed. 19 patients in the period who
were given access to lethal medication decided not to use it. One survey showed that 45% of patients who
were given good palliative care changed their mind about euthanasia.
Another reason for the low take-up was the difficulty of finding a doctor who go along with the request:
The Oregon Health Division reported that only a fifth of physicians of control patients dying of similar
terminal illnesses would have prescribed a lethal medication if asked.
The Dutch approach
In the Netherlands voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide are still criminal offences, but doctors are
exempt from criminal liability in certain circumstances. The Netherlands Criminal Code Article 293,
paragraph two, stipulates that the doctor:
• must be convinced that the patient has made a voluntary and well-considered request to die
• must be convinced that the patient is facing interminable and unendurable suffering
• has informed the patient about his situation and his prospects
• together with the patient, must be convinced that there is no other reasonable solution
• has consulted at least one other independent doctor who has seen the patient
• and given his written assessment of the due care requirements as referred to in the points above
• has helped the patient to die with due medical care
The Dutch law also permits euthanasia for non-adults. Children of 16 and 17 can make their own decision,
but their parents must be involved in the decision-making process regarding the ending of their life. For
children aged 12 to 16, the approval of parents or guardian is required.
If a patient can no longer express their wishes, but made a written statement containing a request for
termination of life before they became incompetent, a doctor is allowed to carry out their request
providing the other conditions are met.
Two thirds of the requests for euthanasia that are put to doctors are refused. Neither doctors nor nurses can
ever be censured for failing to comply with requests for euthanasia.
In...cases where there are no dependants who might exert pressure one way or the other, the right of the
individual to choose should be paramount. So long as the patient is lucid, and his or her intent is clear
beyond doubt, there need be no further questions.
Many people think that each person has the right to control his or her body and life and so should be able
to determine at what time, in what way and by whose hand he or she will die.
Behind this lies the idea that human beings should be as free as possible - and that unnecessary restraints
on human rights are a bad thing.
And behind that lies the idea that human beings are independent biological entities, with the right to take
and carry out decisions about themselves, providing the greater good of society doesn't prohibit this.
Allied to this is a firm belief that death is the end.
Religious objections
Religious opponents disagree because they believe that the right to decide when a person dies belongs to
God.
Secular objections
Secular opponents argue that whatever rights we have are limited by our obligations. The decision to die
by euthanasia will affect other people - our family and friends, and healthcare professionals - and we must
balance the consequences for them (guilt, grief, anger) against our rights.
We should also take account of our obligations to society, and balance our individual right to die against
any bad consequences that it might have for the community in general.
These bad consequences might be practical - such as making involuntary euthanasia easier and so putting
vulnerable people at risk.
There is also a political and philosophical objection that says that our individual right to autonomy against
the state must be balanced against the need to make the sanctity of life an important, intrinsic, abstract
value of the state.
Secular philosophers put forward a number of technical arguments mostly based on the duty to preserve
life because it has value in itself, or the importance of regarding all human beings as ends rather than
means.
The right to life gives a person the right not to be killed if they don't want to be.
• Respect for this right is sufficient to protect against misuse of euthanasia, as any doctor who kills a
patient who doesn't want to die has violated that person's rights.
• Allowing euthanasia will greatly increase the risk of people who want to live being killed. The
danger of violating the right to life is so great that we should ban euthanasia even if it means
violating the right to die.
The rights to privacy and freedom of belief give a person the right to decide how and when to die.
The European Convention on Human Rights gives a person the right to die.
English law already acknowledges that people have the right to die.
• The Suicide Act (1961) made it legal for people to take their own lives.
o This doesn't necessarily acknowledge a right to die.
o it could simply acknowledge that you can't punish someone for succeeding at suicide
o and that it's inappropriate to punish someone so distressed that they want to take their own
life.
• Although the Suicide Act makes it a crime to help someone commit suicide, this provision is really
there to make it impossible to escape a murder charge by dressing the crime up as an assisted
suicide.
Libertarian argument
The libertarian argument
Opponents attack the libertarian argument specifically by showing that there are no cases that fit the
conditions above:
• people sometimes think things are in their best interests that are not morally acceptable
o The arguments that euthanasia is intrinsically wrong fit in here
• people are sometimes wrong about what's in their best interests
• people may not realise that committing euthanasia may harm other people more about this
• euthanasia may deprive both the person who dies and others of benefits
• euthanasia is not a private act - we cannot ignore any bad effects it may have on society in general
Medical resources
Euthanasia may be necessary for the fair distribution of health resources
This argument has not been put forward publicly or seriously by any government or health authority. It is
included here for completeness.
As a result, some people who are ill and could be cured are not able to get speedy access to the facilities
they need for treatment.
At the same time health resources are being used on people who cannot be cured, and who, for their own
reasons, would prefer not to continue living.
Allowing such people to commit euthanasia would not only let them have what they want, it would free
valuable resources to treat people who want to live.
Abuse of this would be prevented by only allowing the person who wanted to die to intitiate the process,
and by regulations that rigorously prevented abuse.
This proposal is an entirely pragmatic one; it says that we should allow euthanasia because it will allow
more people to be happy. Such arguments will not convince anyone who believes that euthanasia is wrong
in principle.
Others will object because they believe that such a proposal is wide-open to abuse, and would ultimately
lead to involuntary euthanasia because of shortage of health resources.
In the end, they fear, people will be expected to commit euthanasia as soon as they become an
unreasonable burden on society.
One of the commonly accepted principles in ethics is that only those ethical principles that could be
accepted as a universal rule (i.e. one that applied to everybody) should be accepted.
So you should only do something if you're willing for anybody to do exactly the same thing in exactly
similar circumstances, regardless of who they are.
The justification for this rule is hard to find - many people think it's just an obvious truth (philosophers
call such truths self-evident). You find variations of this idea in many faiths; for example "do unto others
as you would have them do unto you".
A rule is universalisable if it can consistently be willed as a law that everyone ought to obey. The only
rules which are morally good are those which can be universalised.
The person in favour of euthanasia argues that giving everybody the right to have a good death through
euthanasia is acceptable as a universal principle, and that euthanasia is therefore morally acceptable.
If a person wants to be allowed to commit euthanasia, it would clearly be inconsistent for them to say that
they didn't think it should be allowed for other people.
But the principle of universalisability doesn't actually provide any positive justification for anything -
genuine moral rules must be universalisable, but universalisability is not enough to say that a rule is a
satisfactory moral rule.
Universalisability is therefore only a necessary condition, not a sufficient condition for a rule to be a
morally good rule.
And anyway...
Every case is different in some respect, so anyone who is inclined to argue about it can argue about
whether the particular differences are sufficent to make this case an exception to the rule.
And finally...
Oddly enough, the law of universalisability allows for there to be exceptions - as long as the exceptions
are themselves universalisable. So you could have a universal rule allowing voluntary euthanasia and
universalise an exception for people who were less than 18 years old.
Sounds a bit like "murder happens - better to make it legal and regulate it properly".
When you put it like that, the argument sounds very feeble indeed.
But it is one that is used a lot in discussion, and particularly in politics or round the table in the pub or the
canteen.
People say things like "we can't control drugs so we'd better legalise them", or "if we don't make abortion
legal so that people can have it done in hospital, people will die from backstreet abortions".
What lies behind it is Utilitarianism; the belief that moral rules should be designed to produce the greatest
happiness of the greatest number of people.
If you accept this as the basis for your ethical code (and it's the basis of many people's ethics), then the
arguments above are perfectly sensible.
If you don't accept this principle, but believe that certain things are wrong regardless of what effect they
have on total human happiness then you will probably regard this argument as cynical and wrong.
But even if...
...you do agree with the argument above, you then have to deal with the arguments that suggest that
euthanasia can't be properly regulated.
If death is not a bad thing then many of the objections to euthanasia vanish. Once we get past the idea that
death is a bad thing, we are able to consider whether death may actually sometimes be a good thing.
This makes it much easier to consider the issue of euthanasia from the viewpoint of someone who wants
euthanasia.
The last two reasons why death is a bad thing are not absolute; if a person wants to die, then neither of
those reasons can be used to say that they would be wrong to undergo euthanasia.
People are eager to avoid death because they value being alive, because they have many things they wish
to do, and experiences they wish to have.
But some people say that being dead is not different from not having been born yet, and nobody makes a
fuss about the bad time they had before they were born.
There is a big difference - even though being dead will be no different as an experience from the
experience of not having yet been born.
Death hurts people because it stops them having more of the things that they want, and could have if they
continued to live.
Violation of autonomy
Another reason why death is a bad thing is that it's the worst possible violation of the the wishes of the
person who does not want to die (or, to use philosopher-speak, of their autonomy).