Life vs Death: Euthanasia

The word mercy killing is of Greek origin, which substanti whollyy translates to mean happy or good death. However, since the beginning of the nineteenth century, mercy killing has become associated with speeding up the process of demise or the destruction of so-called useless lives. No longer true to its literal meaning, it is now a practice of deliberating causing or assisting in psyches death. Be acquire it constitutes murder and is immoral, mercy killing should not be legalized in the linked States.Almost every peerless who attempts suicide or asks for assistance in their death do so as a subconscious cry for divine service (Whats Wrong With Making Assisting Suicide Legal? ). These people extremity to identify they be loved, not that more or lessone is actually leave aloneing to assist in their death (Johansen). Many of these people have emotional and psychological pressures, which shadow agent them to choose euthanasia as a way to sack problems. Many be eith er depressed or dependent and argon incapable of making well-informed decisions in that state of mind ( mercy killingAnswers to much Asked Questions).The main concern for those who ask for euthanasia practice should be to revert them emotional and spiritual support for their problems (euthanasia Answers To ). Tis type of counseling and assistance has be to be successful. A study beginnere on 886 people who had as reckon suicide and been helped showed that hardly 3. 84 percent had gone on to vote down themselves 5 old age later. Another study showed that after 36 years, only 10. 9 percent had killed themselves (Whats Wrong With ). If euthanasia became legalized, it would be administered for those who ar mentally unable to choose what is best, when they could quite be helped.Many who atomic number 18 in favor of euthanasia may say that a betoken to be killed is only justified when a doctor thinks a unhurried role does not have a worthwhile feel (Gormally). However, no one pot judge the worth of a persons deportment. As a society, we are coming to understand that mere preservation of the descriptor is not the highest value. Many times it is the family of a unhurried who determines whether or not they live a worthwhile life depending on if they rotter participate in normal human relationships (euthanasia Opposing Viewpoints 103, 117).Those who support euthanasia strongly believe everyone should have take care all over their own life and death and many who give requests for euthanasia may indicate they are positively asserting their desire to control events (The Case For ). However, the religious aspects to this fill pop support a different view. Religions such as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam hold life as sacred and believe it is a gift from God ( mercy killing reverberate&Wagnalls). If the gift of life is from God, then only God coffin nail decide when that life should end, not someone else assisting in a death.Euthanasia is also c onsidered immoral by these religions because the 10 commandments prohibit murder, which is essentially what euthanasia has become (Euthanasia Britannica). When many are suffering from a indisposition, they would preferably die a dignified death than suffer tragically from the disease (The Case For Voluntary Euthanasia). Euthanasia activists claim euthanasia is death with arrogance, even though the methods in which the deaths are carried out are anything but dignified. This idler be supported by the euthanasia cases of Dr. Kevorkian, the Doctor of ending (Johansen).Dr. Kevorkian has used carbon monoxide to gas people to death, and has also had bodies dumped in unoccupied vehicles in parking lots ( Euthanasia Answers To ). Another example of how euthanasia killings are not dignified can be shown by the counterbalance televisioned mercy killing, which aired in March 1995 in Great Britain that caused the offset for the euthanasia controversy. The man who allowed cameras to be present at his death was a 63 year old patient of Motor Neurone Disease. Over 13 million people watched as he received a lethal injection by his doctor (Pratt).When these killings can be displayed for the public to see, they can not be considered dignified, especially by the means in which these deaths occur. If Euthanasia practices become legal, it would only legitimize these degrading practices. Most elderly dont business death as much as they fear the cark and suffering that may come along with it (Euthanasia Opposing Viewpoints 136). Because of this, some justify the euthanasia practice as a way to help unruly or intolerable pain that is placed on a patient. pull down so, deaths by euthanasia are not always painless.Even a passive act of euthanasia such as the pulling out of life support, food and water, can cause a slow and biting death (Euthanasia Opposing Viewpoints 39). Death is also not the only resolving for pain control. In fact, pain control has been perfected in the acquirement fields, so that most pain can be eliminated completely or greatly reduced. Even though doctors are supposed to help control pain, many have never had a course in pain management and dont know what to do (Euthanasia Answers To ). Better instruction should be provided to restoreth care professionals in assign to help heal a patient, not harm them, or even kill them.though euthanasia is illegal in most countries, where it is widely practiced, such as in the Netherlands, it has sometimes become involuntary on the side of the patient. Euthanasia is held accountable for 15 percent of deaths in the Netherlands, where patients actually fear being checked into hospitals (Johansen). Many times involuntary euthanasia occurs because the patient is bungling to nettle decisions. Even though the patient may have pen in advance a living will, a will in the United States that allows a person to make decisions on the type of treatments they would want if they were ill, a proxy can override these decisions.A proxy is ordinarily a relative or friend of the patient that can make decisions for them if they are incapable of communicating on their own. This person could then cause the death of a patient, even if it is a passive act of euthanasia which is not doing something that is necessary to keep a person alive (Pratt). If euthanasia were practiced legally in the United States, it would become involuntary to the patient and possibly cause a larger percentage of deaths than it already does, as it has in the Netherlands where it is commonly practiced.It is also said that euthanasia would be for those dying from an incurable disease or intolerable suffering (Euthanasia Funk&Wagnalls). However, there is no real interpretation for an incurable or remainder disease, especially since modern medicine has lengthened life spans. Some say a terminal disease is a disease that can cause a death within 6 months, while some who are claimed to be terminally ill may not die for several(prenominal) years (Euthanasia Answers To ). In 1976, the New Jersey Supreme Court gave license to the parents of comatose Karen Ann Quinlan to remove her from the respirator that was keeping her alive.Even though she was judge to die immediately, she began to breathe on her own and lived another 9 years (Euthanasia Opposing Viewpoints). Because of cases such as this that show fault in the definition for terminally ill, euthanasia activists change the term terminally ill to dispiritedly ill or desperately ill. The definition used for hopeless trail includes those with physical or psychological pain, physical or mental deterioration, or a quality of life unacceptable to the patient (Euthanasia Answers To ).With such capacious definitions for the term, hopelessly ill could include mostly everyone. The legalization of euthanasia would totally contradict the medical practices that were established in the Hippocratic Oath, an oath over 2500 years old. Medical s tudents, upon completion of medical school, must vow I will use treatment to help the sick according to my top executive and judgement, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer poison to any personify and when asked to do so, nor will I invoke such a course (Euthanasia Opposing Viewpoints 97).Even though uncomplete the laws nor medical ethics say everything should be done to keep a person alive, the oath forces medical professionals to make a promise to help the sick (Maier). Doctors should be highly passable educated in ordinate to make the best decision for each individual patient. Even if a person requests assistance in their death, it does not give the doctor enough reason to say euthanasia would be the best choice for that patient (Gormally).Poisons, as stated in the Hippocratic Oath, are not to be administered even though many mercy killings now are affiliated with double effect. These are high doses of medicine that may kill a person fa ster (The Case for ). A high dose of a medicine is as much of a poison to a body as carbon monoxide, another means of carrying out the death, is. If euthanasia became original in the medical professions, it would be an immoral practice that would contradict its origins. For those who are pro-euthanasia, the laws pertaining to euthanasia are considered to be government mandated suffering.The other side to this personal line of credit is that these laws are not intended to make anyone suffer, but are instead created to prevent abuse and protect patients from bad doctors (Euthanasia Answers To ). There is no actual provision in the legal systems for euthanasia. It is either considered murder or suicide in the United States (Euthanasia Brittanica). It can be a surd situation because on one hand doctors who force treatment against wishes can be charged with assault (Pratt), while if nothing is done to elicit life or if life-support is withdrawn, criminal charges can be also be brough t on (Euthanasia Britannica).In the Netherlands, doctors can assist in a euthanasia death even though it is illegal without the happening of prosecution and there, euthanasia has become out of hand (Pratt). With the legalization of euthanasia in the U. S. , laws and policies would be changed so that rights that would be given to others in order to intentionally cause the end of a life (Euthanasia Answers To ). It would become an uncontrollable practice. Instead of legalization, laws on euthanasia should become stricter. Euthanasia has become a problem in the United States that would only become worse if it were legalized.legalisation of euthanasia can not be justified when there is no real determination for the definitions of many terms that play a major role in the euthanasia issue. The practice of euthanasia also carries out undignified deaths that are immoral. It has no benefit to the medical society and contradicts all medical ethics. Assisted suicide has also become involunta ry, unsuccessful, and uncontrollable in other countries. For these many reasons, euthanasia should not become legal in the United States.