Against the Legalisation of Euthanasia - Essay Example

Against the Legalisation of Euthanasia Murder, Suicide or Mercy? Euthanasia has been defined by some individuals as an act of murder and/or suicide. For die-hard supporters, it is a more fulfilling choice of death over life. Mildly termed as ‘assisted suicide’, euthanasia is the final resort to terminate a person’s prolonged suffering when all other medical, emotional and physical avenues for better health and better care no longer exist. Legislative discussions for permitting active euthanasia in various countries have been repeatedly debated among their politicians, jurists, ethicists and even medical practitioners often resulting in drastic to insignificant or ambiguous changes in the concerned country’s legal framework.

To name a few, countries like the United States, Netherlands, Belgium and Australia have legalised active euthanasia unlike a country such as Germany that only sees it happen once in a while through the back doors (Sahm, 2000). Attitudes of the Medical Practitioners In their published article, two Yugoslav medical practitioners, S. Radulovic and S. Mojsilovic, conducted a survey to define the attitudes and opinions of physicians, supported by medical students and lawyers relating to euthanasia as a problem.

It is important to note that the medical practitioners’ group, including medical students, opposed the use of euthanasia by a two-third majority of the responses in stark contrast to the lawyers favouring legalisation at 61% with oncologists, family doctors and medical students only achieving 43%, 30% and 23% respectively. Doctors, being under moral, legal and ethical obligations to their patients, cannot harm them, thus the concept of legalised euthanasia is conflicting with Yugoslavian family physicians having a higher rating to use euthanasia as an alternative means to palliative care as against one in every five oncologists (Radulovic & Mojsilovic, 1998).

Legalizing euthanasia in Germany During the period of 1939 to 1941, the Hitler regime subjected 75,000 to 100, 000 people to a program known as the Action T4. The T4, inline with the ‘racial hygiene’ program of the same era, cleansed the German society by systematically killing people with intellectual and/or physical disabilities. This precedent paved the way for the later Holocaust of the Jews of Europe (Wikipedia, 2006) and has also brought about unethical and unconventional methods of new-age assisted suicide for personal and economic motives.

In an attempt to keep the floodgates closed, the German government has not legalized euthanasia, but the law does provide legal loopholes which authorise German medical practitioners to implement end-of-life decisions whenever required. To speed up the dying process, therapeutic measures, termination of treatment before the arrival of the death, depression leading to hasty decisions and family influences are some of the major factors that can help a patient to lose his/her living will and influence his/her decision towards accepting physician-assisted suicide (Oehmichen & Meissner, 2003).

Active Euthanasia’s Latest Answer Alternative procedures in medicine allow for restricted use of active euthanasia only on dying or vegetative-state patients. On the other hand, a well-developed palliative care system greatly questions the idea of mercy killing. Palliative care can range from easing resulted-nausea after a chemotherapy session to providing food and drink for a terminally-ill patient. No matter what the disease or illness, eliminating pain and prolonging life through reducing severity of the symptoms is the only ethical answer to active euthanasia.

The creation of hospices for the terminally ill in well-developed Western countries is a fight against euthanasia in hospitals. Conclusion From the debate concerning the topic and the medical opinions of doctors and nurses polled by Radulovic & Mojsilovic (1998), it is clear that the doctor’s duty is to protect the life of the patient. It is a rule which has stood firm since the time of Hippocrates and reaffirmed for nurses by the Nightingale Oath. The legalisation of euthanasia would be an unethical move especially in an environment where the majority of doctors and physician consider it to be unethical to begin with.

If it is legalised then doctors and nurses would be placed in an ethical conflict which presently does not exist for them in any real sense. In fact, legalising euthanasia would create more ethical and legal issues than it would solve for doctors as well as their patients. Works Cited: Oehmichen, M. Meissner, C. 2003. Active euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide: the German discussion. Elsevier Legal Medicine, Retrieved October 5, 2006 from website: http://www.elsevier.com Radulovic, S. Mojsilovic, S. 1998. Attitudes of oncologists, family doctors, medical students and lawyers to euthanasia.

Support Care Cancer. 6: 410-415. Sahm, S. W., 2000. Palliative Care versus Euthanasia. The German Position: The German General Medical Council’s Principles for Medical Care of the Terminally Ill. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. 25(2): 195–219. Wikipedia, 2006. Action T4. Retrieved October 7, 2006 from Wikipedia website: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-4_Euthanasia_Program