Euthanasia - Essay Example

This procedure is also performed on patients who are in a “vegetative state” for example a patient who is suffering from severe brain damage and goes into coma and there is no possibility of coming back to consciousness. In this procedure nature is allowed to take its course, by removing the life support from the patient and stopping any kind of medication. Another method is by stopping the supply of food and water to the patient who starves to death. In another method, CPR is stopped (cardio-pulmonary resuscitation) and allowing a person whose heart has already stopped working, to die.

The most common form of Euthanasia is by administering large doses of morphine which has a dual effect of relieving pain as well as hastening death. Administering such medication is considered ethical and right by most medical societies. This method involves causing the death of a person directly by an action in response to the request of the patient. When a patient suffers immensely and can’t take it any more, the doctor is obligated or obliged to relieve the patient from his suffering even if it is through mercy killing.

This is another way of mercy killing where the physician supplies the means or the information to the patient on how to commit suicide, either through an overdose of sleeping pills or by carbon monoxide. In this method the patient is allowed to take his own life. PAS is considered legal only in the American State of Oregon and in the Netherlands. This is a method of mercy killing where the patient doesn’t exactly request to end his life, but it is done because he is in a constant state of unconsciousness and he would never regain consciousness.

There are very many reasons for the patient to resolve themselves to using Euthanasia and every reason is quite genuine. Patients who live in chronic pain and can no longer carry on opt for mercy killing to put and end to their pain. Some