Yes, I am guilty of using the serious headlining faux pas of the ‘Hamlet Reference’. However, it may be apt, given the subject matter of this post. (I do deserve tomatoes thrown my way for lazy title creativity, yes.)
The BBC has posted a summary of where many European nations stand on the issue of euthanasia. For clarity, euthanasia is defined by Oxford as “the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable disease or in an irreversible coma.” Though, as we all clearly know, it isn’t as clean-cut as it seems. Take, for instance, the different types of euthanasia (as outlined in the article).
Active euthanasia: taking deliberate action, such as an injection, to end a patient’s life.
Passive euthanasia: withdrawing medical treatment with the aim of ending a life.
Assisted suicide: providing the means, e.g. medicine, to allow a patient to end his or her own life.
Some interesting facts presented by the article (if, perchance, you find you can’t be bothered to read the entire thing):
- The Netherlands is the first country to legalize euthanasia (2002), though it has been tolerated since the 1970s.
- Belgium legalized euthanasia shortly afterwards, despite the strong opposition by the medical profession and the Catholic church.
- Italy does not condone the act, but allows a patient’s right to refuse care. Italians have long been divided over this issue.
- A recent survey conducted among Swedish doctors suggested that 84% of them would never consider helping a patient die, even if the patient asked for it and it was legal.
- Assisted suicide can be done even by non-doctors in Switzerland.
- Euthanasia has long been a serious taboo in Germany mainly because of the Nazi genocide of men, women and children believed to be handicapped or mentally ill.
- In the U.K., the removal of life support is not illegal.
- Poland has strongly condemned euthanasia.
I suppose it all comes down to two questions: “At what point does a life become worthless?” and “Do we as human beings have the right to take other people’s–or our own–lives away?” So many other questions then open up, many religious in nature–the issue of the soul, God/Allah/Yahweh’s will, our power as mere mortals, heaven and hell, &c&c. It all depends on what you believe in. And in many places, Church and State aren’t separated at all; they work together, with religious viewpoints influencing bylaws and legislations. Although, in a deeply moral issue such as this, should the Church and State be completely independent of each other? Where do we draw the line between what’s ‘morally right’ and what isn’t?
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7 April, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Nika
My main problem with euthanasia is the hypocrisy that surrounds it.
Euthanasia is not such a grey area – no matter what kind of euthanasia takes place, someone is still dying. I find it makes little sense to refuse care for a patient (Like what happened to Terry Schiavo) and then turn around and say, “No, no injection like you asked for. You don’t have the RIGHT.”
No matter what, I believe that when someone is suffering from a serious illness with *with no hope of recovery* they have the right to die with dignity, and to die without prolonged suffering.
What happened to Mrs. Schiavo was terrible – seeing as although the court ruled that she would have chosen to die, we’ll never know if she did – and not to mention, a death by dehydration/starvation is PAINFUL.
You should be able to have your own life in your hands. I don’t think that a court should be able to decipher, based on second-hand information, that you want to die. Death is way permanent. If it takes place, it better be by your own hands.
That’s just my stand. As for the involvement of the State/Church – if they belong to the Church, the Church should speak on their behalf. Although that, again, is iffy – not everyone who goes to church is against euthanasia, and not everyone who’s against euthanasia goes to church.
9 April, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Beth
Dude. You really know how to pick a topic to involve me. We discussed in this our Medicine and Society class. I’d love to debate/discuss this further with anyone because it’s just such a great topic that involves everything.
I’ll address Kim’s post first:
Euthanasia addresses a whole bunch of questions, like the two you pointed out. But one key question, related to your second question but in a broader sense, is “Who has the right to say whether someone lives or dies?” Now, the courts are saying they have the responsibility to step in and decide because doctors no longer have the patient’s interest in mind (concerns about malpractice plays a serious role here). Is that right? Should there be a law that grants the courts or the president or someone of a higher authority to say who can live and who can die? Now I think all hospitals have something akin to an ethics committee that a patient, their family, and their physician must go before in order to determine whether treatment should be terminated or continued. If you can’t resolve it there, you take it to court.
I found the Swedish fact really interesting and really the key thing behind the conflict of allowing euthanasia. Doctors are always ALWAYS to abide by the Hippocratic Oath – to do no harm and to work in the patient’s interest. By legalizing euthanasia, you’re undermining the basis of medical practice. Euthanasia goes against what doctors work for. An argument against this, mainly made by physicians for euthanasia, is that by allowing a patient to live an agonizing and drawn-out death is harm.
But, euthanasia, and suicide in general, among patients is usually considered because a treatment is too terrible to bear (radiation/chemotherapy for example) or because they see no hope in recovering. That is when the doctor steps in. My firm belief, as a premed student, is that a doctor is ONLY there to advise. That is it. Doctors can’t make decisions for the patient, and doctors certainly can’t assume that a patient would choose life or death. I obstinately believe that the doctor should inform the patient of all their options and of their prognosis, no matter how terrible they are. But life or death, treatment or DNR – that is for the patient to decide on their own with or without the help of their family. By lying to patients about their illness (from the 1950s-1960s, 90% of American doctors didn’t tell their patients they had cancer) or by prettying up the prognosis, a doctor takes away the patient’s right to participate in their own treatment or lack thereof and therefore takes away the patient’s right to control his/her own body and life.
That is why I think involving courts or making laws to illegalize/legalize euthanasia is wrong. While doctors may need guidance from time to time, it is not up to the courts to decide who lives and who dies. The court is not the one treating the patient. The court is not the one who establishes that vital relationship with a dying person. The court merely interjects and shows supreme power and authority over physicians who sometimes do need that flexibility in order to work.
Personally, I’m for passive euthanasia only when a patient fully understands his/her decision and understands the other options he/she has available. This means enacting some sort of system that requires people to have a living will in case they are not capable of making that decision when the time comes. For example, I think California had a law sometime ago when the citizens were required to have a living will renewed every five years and/or renewed when the citizen was diagnosed with a terminal illness. That way, there would be no discrepancies about whether someone would’ve wanted to live or to die, as in the Schiavo case. I’m against active euthanasia and assisted suicide because of my rigid belief in the Hippocratic Oath. I guess you can say that for me, the sin of omission is less than the sin of commission.
Now to refer to the Schiavo case specifically.
First, I’d like to let you know that dying of starvation is not as bad as it sounds. When you starve, your body releases endorphins that make you feel more pleasant while your body uses your own tissues for fuel. It’s not that bad of a death. Dying of dehydration is a different story, but Terry Schiavo didn’t die from dehydration; she died from starvation.
I’d like to respectfully disagree with you about how euthanasia is not a grey area. It really is because, as I pointed out earlier, there’s a severe difference between active euthanasia and passive euthanasia. The doctor does not want to break the oath he/she made when graduating from medical school and which serves as the primary foundation of his/her practice. This may seem like a selfish reason, but that’s under the incorrect assumption that doctors aren’t human beings and they don’t actually mind killing their patient indirectly.
Your other points, Nika, I agree with you. The court could not have known what Terry would’ve wanted. Both Terry’s parents and Terry’s husband were solely using Terry in their own self-interest. Terry’s parents wanted to keep their child alive no matter what the cost, and Terry’s husband wanted Terry out of the way so he can go on with his life. I will admit I was very upset with the court’s findings and was on a soap box very much like this one for a week.
9 April, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Beth
>.> I’d like to add that I have a lot more to say on this subject but it goes off on a tangent. More about how a patient comes to distrust their doctors and the like.
I’d also like to add that euthanasia really didn’t become a big problem until after World War II. It became a big problem partially because of the Nazi thing and from there, it stemmed into the larger problem of who’s boss. For example, you’ll notice that my factoid about how doctors didn’t inform their patients they had cancer occurred in the 1950s and 1960s. When the 1960s and 1970s rolled around, when civil rights, anti-war, and feminism movements moved to the headlines, that statistic did a full 180-degree change: 98% of American doctors then informed their patient they had cancer. Neat, huh?
Finally, I’d like to add that hospices are an option for those who want to withdraw from treatment and die peacefully and dignified. You’ll notice that most hospices aren’t strongly related to a hospital (true, they’ll sport the hospital’s name) – I would think this is because a hospital wants to be seen as a place to recover and to live, not a place to die. Dying in society nowadays, especially in the hospital, is seen as failure. Perhaps we need a new definition of what dying means and what it implies. Back on the topic of hospices though, I know here in the U.S. a patient can only enter a hospice only if they have less than six months to live and if they do not use preventive medicine (no emergency care or resuscitation). The only drugs hospice patients are allowed to use are painkillers. I’m not sure about the U.K., where their hospice system is a lot more complex and a lot more integrative into the hospital system.
Bah, I only meant to add one or two things >.>