As we have seen in the cases of The Rights and Treatment of Patients, Abortion,Organ Transplants, Genetic Technology and now Death and Dying issues. There are many ethical issues involved concerning right and wrong actions.
The issues involving Euthanasia can make it a difficult procedure to control and regulate.
What problems and issues do you see if made legal in all of the United States
What would Secular Humanists believe? What would JudeoChristians believe?
Unit Objectives
Demonstrate Knowledge of The Issue of Life and Death and the Pro and Cons of Euthanasia
Suicide – the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally.
Euthanasia-Euthanasia (from Greek: εὐθανασία; “good death”: εὖ, eu; “well” or “good” – θάνατος, thanatos; “death”) is the practice of intentionally ending a life to relieve pain and suffering. There are different euthanasialaws in each country.
Proponents
of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) contend that terminally ill
people should have the right to end their suffering with a quick, dignified,
and compassionate death. They argue that the right to die is protected by the
same constitutional safeguards that guarantee such rights as marriage,
procreation, and the refusal or termination of life-saving medical
treatment.
Opponents of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide contend that doctors
have a moral responsibility to keep their patients alive as reflected by the
Hippocratic Oath. They argue there may be a “slippery slope” from
euthanasia to murder, and that legalizing euthanasia will unfairly target the poor
and disabled and create incentives for insurance companies to terminate lives
in order to save money.
Mercy Death – someone taking a direct action to end a patient’s life because the patient has requested it be done
Mercy Killing-someone taking a direct action to terminate a patient’s life without the patient’s permission
Brain Death– Over the last hundred years, the criteria for establishing human death has changed with knowledge from breathing on a doctor’s mirror to today’s standard of total brain death.
Harvard Medical School Criteria for establishing death
1. Unreceptivity and Unresposiveness to physical stimuli
2. No spontaneous movements or breathing
3. No reflexes
4. A flat electroencephalogram (EEG)
Allowing Someone to Die– implies a essential recognition that there is some point in any terminal illness when further curative treatment has no purpose and that a patient in this situation should be allowed a natural death in comfort, peace and dignity.
Ordinary and Extraordinary care are distinguished by some bioethical theories, including the teaching of the Catholic Church.[1] Ordinary care is obligatory, food, hydration, water, medication, surgery but can become extraordinary care under certain situations.[2] Extraordinary care is care whose provision involves a disproportionately great burden on the patient or community, and hence is not morally obligatory.
On the Catholic version of the distinction, the natural provision of life necessities, such as food, air, and water, is an example of ordinary care, although it does not exhaust ordinary care, since easily performed medical procedures (that do not impose an undue burden on patient and community) will also be ordinary care. Many times, what was once considered extraordinary care becomes ordinary with developing medical knowledge (Organ transplants were once considered extraordinary care.
Principle of Hope of Benefit– in the treatment of serious illness there a point when further experimental treatment options become questionable in terms of their value to the patient’s quality of life. How will help or hurt this person?
Hospice Care/Palliative Care
Hospice care: Care designed to give supportive care to people in the final phase of a terminal illness and focus on comfort and quality of life, rather than cure. The goal is to enable patients to be comfortable and free of pain, so that they live each day as fully as possible
Advanced Directives- legal documents such as Living Will, Proxys (permanent or temporary)etc. which direct care if patient becomes incompetent.
