Euthanasia

Euthanasia or assisted suicide is the act of killing a patient suffering an incurable disease painlessly. Many people are against the idea of killing a person, whether someone wishes to die or not as it is regarded as a type of murder and is considered inhumane. Euthanasia is illegal in most countries and when it does occur, it raises a wave of controversy. However, although one should help a human to survive and live, at the end, people should have the choice to decide whether they want to end their own lives.

People say that once a person dies, one will never know whether the patient will survive or a miracle recovery would happen. However, in most countries that did legalize euthanasia, it is reserved exclusively for terminally ill people. Many people would argue that were euthanasia be legalized, doctors would abuse that power to free spaces in a hospital or to use less funds. However, just because euthanasia is legalized, the process for a patient to be approved to undergo euthanasia is also long and complicated and doctors won't have the permission to carry out the action without sufficient paperwork. This paperwork can supervise abuses of euthanasia

Passive euthanasia, where a patient's life is ended without the use of drugs, usually by being taken off of life support of being denied food, is already widespread in the world. In a study in 2012, as many as 57 thousand people die every year in Britain through passive euthanasia. Euthanasia in Britain is illegal, so the government won't be able to track the abuse. In contrast, a report in 1991 in the Netherlands, a decade before euthanasia was legalized there, 0.8 percent of euthanasia procedures were performed without the patient's consent. In 2005, another study found that this number dropped to 0.4 percent.

People who are denied euthanasia often claim their life is dull and sheer torture. They often state that their dignity and privacy are lost. Tony Nicklinson was, a 58 year-old-man who suffered from locked-in syndrome, where the patient in conscious and is capable of sound, but they are paralyzed from neck down and are unable to speak. He can only communicate by blinking and a few head movements. He can only eat if someone feeds him and he has to be washed and dressed by caregivers. He described his life as a living torture. In 2010 and 2012 he bid to die, but he was rejected. In the end, he starved himself and died within a week.

Euthanasia is performed by veterinarians. People bring their dying and suffering pets to be "put to sleep" The pets are injected in a vein with pentobarbital with shuts down the functionality of the brain and stops the heart. The animal immediately looses consciousness so they don't feel any pain and the whole process, in most cases takes about 5 seconds. If animals are euthanized because of chronic diseases or severe illnesses, why can't humans.

The Hippocratic Oath, "First do no harm" is used by doctors as a code of conduct. This means that doctor's can't do anything to harm a patient's chance of survival. The Hippocratic Oath was a piece of text written 2000 years ago by Hippocrates and was summed up into the maxim. However, today, with modern advancements in medicine, most of the points in the oath are not viable anymore, so why are we still clinging onto the Hippocratic Oath? Besides, put under a different perspective, it could also mean "don't hurt a patient by letting them suffer." Through a different light, "harm" can have a different meaning. By keeping a patient in anguish and letting them suffer by keeping them alive, we are also violating the maxim by causing them pain and harm.

Although assisted suicide does present new problems, it also allows suffering victims to alleviate their pain. Much of the public already supports euthanasia. Currently, 70 percent of Americans support "ending a patient's life by some painless mean" in Gallup's poll. Euthanasia is not an immoral action. Through assisted suicide, patients are able to experience death with dignity.