Euthanasia

Euthanasia is known as the act of deliberately ending life, thereby, discharging a person from a hopeless illness or painful survival. It is frequently alluded as a simple and effortless death. Voluntary euthanasia is the ending of a patient’s life upon the request of the person or his attorney. Positive euthanasia is the act of taking deliberate action to cause the painless death. Failure to take action to prevent someone’s death is referred to as negative euthanasia. Euthanasia is still illegal in most states in the USA. Most people agree that euthanasia should be allowed in a free society. My opinion is that euthanasia should be allowed as it allows an individual to have a peaceful and painless death. It also relieves the family of the necessity to raise high amounts in hospital bills and provides a legal escape for those who have chosen to go that way sooner or later.

Patients of interminable diseases like cancer should be allowed to choose their time of death. This is on the grounds that cancer is the number one killer in the USA[i]. Cancer is associated with severe and intractable pain. This pain is unmanageable and should therefore be sufficient grounds for allowing one to choose their time of death. Patients with intractable cancer often get various side effects including exhaustion, anxiety, mental confusion, anxiety and nausea. Most of these side effects cannot be disposed of and may often influence the sense capacity and wellbeing. Allowing euthanasia is the solution to such pain as is experienced during the terminal stage of the diseases.  I additionally concur that strict rules must be put into place to prevent misuse from families that may benefit from one’s death[ii].

Patients with interminable diseases are often very expensive to manage. While everyone knows that the patient will eventually die, it is unnecessary to allow the patient to continue to raise the economic burden for their families if they choose to terminate their lives. Those patients who have terminal illnesses have no hope of survival. Failure to allow them to choose their time of death prevents such families from surviving economically. Eventually, trying to sustain life a little longer may only be pushing it away for the rest of the family. If doctors cannot change one’s destiny which they are aware about, why assist in retention of life while they can end it and save the family a fortune?

Thirdly, terminally ill patients often go to great lengths to end their lives. Some patients seek for illegal medications that are certain to cause their deaths. Others may also opt to go on hunger strikes while others opt to stop taking their medications[iii]. All these are either very painful or expensive methods of terminating lives and should be allowed at any cost. Allowing euthanasia will allow patients to use legal methods of speeding up death when it cannot be avoided.

In conclusion, I believe that euthanasia should be legalized for terminally ill patients. This way, people who have terminal illnesses will have a chance at a peaceful and painless death. Second, the legalization of euthanasia will allow patients to die and leave their families economically stable. Thirdly, patients with terminal illnesses often go to great lengths to end their lives. They however only get access to expensive or more painful means of death. For this reason, patients who have a sure death penalty issued by their illnesses should be allowed an earlier death.

Bibliography

Bachman, Jerald G., Kirsten H. Alcser, David J. Doukas, Richard L. Lichtenstein, Amy D. Corning, and Howard Brody. “Attitudes of Michigan physicians and the public toward legalizing physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia.” New England Journal of Medicine 334, no. 5 (1996): 303-309.

Ferrand, Edouard, Eric Rondeau, François Lemaire, and Marc Fischler. “Requests for euthanasia and palliative care in France.” The Lancet 377, no. 9764 (2011): 467-468.

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i Bachman, Jerald G., Kirsten H. Alcser, David J. Doukas, Richard L. Lichtenstein, Amy D. Corning, and Howard Brody. “Attitudes of Michigan physicians and the public toward legalizing physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia.” New England Journal of Medicine 334, no. 5 (1996): 306

ii Ferrand, Edouard, Eric Rondeau, François Lemaire, and Marc Fischler. “Requests for euthanasia and palliative care in France.” The Lancet 377, no. 9764 (2011): 467