Ethics of Euthanasia

Passive euthanasia is usually requested by the person dying, either verbally or through a written document such as a living will. In passive euthanasia, by withholding intravenous feedings, medications, surgery, a pacemaker, or a respirator, the doctor can let the patient die of the underlying disease. Active euthanasia, on the other hand, refers to someone's taking active steps to give a dying person, on his or her request, a lethal dosage of drugs in order to hasten death. We can see through history that the Greeks and the Romans believed in the importance of a death with dignity that they achieved by using poisons. In the second and third centuries AD, the Christian spirit opposed the active or passive ending of life for anyone in order to gain relief. Nevertheless during the Renaissance, people stopped to criticize suicide. The modern euthanasia movement began in England in 1935, when G. B. Shaw and H. G. Wells started a Voluntary Euthanasia Society that later became known by the name 'Exit'.

In the United States, the movement was begun by Charles Potter, under the name 'Society for the Right to Die'. Finally, in the early 1970s, other voluntary euthanasia societies were formed in the Netherlands and in Australia 'as the two edged blade of modern medical technology became obvious'. In this research paper we will analyze the ethics of Euthanasia that can be separated on three major bases: the philosophical, the moral, and the legal base. The debate over these bases for euthanasia has 'spilled considerable ink' since the early 1970s and will probably continue to do so into the twenty-first century. But how these issues should be faced? Beginning with the philosophical aspects of euthanasia we must first understand the importance of the sanctity of life. As R. Dworkin (p. 82), claims that human life is sacred because on the one hand religious traditions believe that God made humankind 'in His own image', and that each individual human being is a representation of the Creator.

On the other hand the idea that human beings are something special among the whole creation explains why it is horrible that even a single human individual life should be extinguished. These interconnections are most evident in the lives of people who are religious in traditional ways. However, most people who are not religious or atheists also have general, instinctive convictions about whether, why, and how any human life has intrinsic value. Therefore, supporting the religious viewpoint we would represent a large portion of the demurrers of euthanasia. The mystery of life continues to tease us even after its end. The intercession of the man into this unknown process that leads the creatures towards their postmortem beginning of another life, the substitution of the Life-giver's authority by the man, it isn't just an act of disrespect, but an impermissible and arbitrary interference of the fiddling creature in God's will. As an ethicist (Зarakas, p. 92- 94) in the U.S. writes, "God is the giver of life, and 'in His hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind'(Job 12:10).

To wrongfully take the life of an innocent person is murder and is condemned as a sin (Exodus 20:13). The only 'good death' for the Christian is the peaceful acceptance of the end of his or her life with faith and trust in God and the promise of Resurrection. Nevertheless, we shouldn't forget that in vital and crucial moments in our lives, we don't easily loose our hope for a miracle, which in some cases happens. Looking through the moral aspects of euthanasia, we can divide them in two points of view: of the euthanized (patient) and his environment, and of the responsible doctor. Starting with the moral analysis of the patient who desires to go through euthanasia, we could say that his or her wish has some logical arguments. This wish, according to G. M. Burnell (p. 251), comes from the need of the patient to avoid or end the unbearable pain during a terminal illness, to have a 'better' quality of life, or to prevent unnecessary financial burden on his family. However, some equally logical questions emerge. Do the people who are actually contemplating euthanasia for themselves generally put their requests in these terms? Or are they not rather looking for a way to end their troubles and pains? One can sympathize with such a motive, out of compassion, but can one admire it, out of respect? Is it really dignified to seek to escape from troubles to oneself? Is there, to repeat, not more dignity in courage than in its absence? Euthanasia for one's own dignity is, at best, paradoxical, even self-contradictory: How can I honor myself by making myself nothing? Even if dignity were to consist solely in autonomy, is it not an embarrassment to claim that autonomy reaches its zenith precisely as it disappears? Leon R. Kass (p. 139) in his article about death with dignity, says: "The deaths we most admire are those of people who, knowing that they are dying, face the fact frontally and act accordingly: They set their affairs in order; they arrange what could be final meetings with their loved ones, and yet, with strength of soul and a small reservoir of hope, they continue to live and work and love as much as they can for as long as they can".

There is also another danger. The medical experience has taught that the incurable man may ask for his end under the state of unbearable suffering, but when his pains shrink or stop, life reappears and the appeal is now for its preservation and not for its ending. In addition, the intolerable pressure of the relatives generates an amount of questions and suspicions, especially when financial and hereditary interests coexist. To continue with the doctors' position on the subject, we must first underline that the Hippocratic oath that is made from the majority of the doctors around the world, and has lead and still leads their consciences for centuries, is outright, and starkly prohibitive to any act or attempt of euthanasia. We copy: "...I will neither give a deadly drug to anyone, if asked for, nor will I make suggestion to this effect"(Drakopoulos, p. 32). According to an American doctor (Leon R. Kass, p. 136), "killing patients – even those who ask for death- violates the inner meaning of the art of healing".

Undebatably, there are also real and genuine signs of pity and compassion for our weak companion, parent, or child. And maybe most of us have been witnesses of such situations where the pen is unable to describe the deep emotions of dedication, affection, pain, and the appeal for relief in the eyes of both sides. And in the middle, the doctor who is standing incapable to stop the decay, is hovering above the hesitations of his heart and his conscience. In these difficult situations, the experience of the previous generations of the medicine teaches that the doctor on the one hand must use up all his scientific effort for the relief from the pain, and on the other hand should stand by the patient as the man who tenders the hope and not as his executioner who leads to death. On the contrary, there are cases where doctors do not respect their Oath and put into practice euthanasia to people for their own benefit or as they say for 'scientific gain'. Doctor 'Death', Jack Kevorkian, is a grand example. The newspaper "New Republic" (Betzhold M., p. 22), has written for the famous doctor that he manipulates deaths for scientific gain. Kevorkian has said that euthanasia is just the first step; what he finds the most satisfying is the prospect of making possible the performance of invaluable experiments.