Euthanasia as a Right (Research Paper Sample)

Euthanasia
Name:
Institution:
Introduction
One of the debates that have rocked the local news and social forums over the last several decades involves the aspects of taking ones life. For majority of the people, every one has a right to decide when they want to die and how they want to make it happen. As such, it is seen as one of the most acclaimed levels of controlling one’s life (Somerville, 2001). Over the years, death has to come to most people without their ability to control the event leading to point of death.
However, with the recent deliberation on control, a good number of people feel that they should be accorded the right to take their own lives (Griffiths, Bood & Weyers, 1998). This is differentiated from suicide, by the fact that in all the cases where people have chosen to die on their own terms, they have been terminally ill. As such, it is a way of maintaining control over when and how they would want to end their life. Ideally, this will reduce suffering for both the patient, family and the friends. The main debate relates to treating patients that are not likely to recover from their sickness such as terminal cancer among others.
However, this is basically a rebranded quest to allow people to commit suicide in sight of the escalating problems in their lives (Biggs, 2001). As such, people are now treated as worthless due to their health circumstances. It is the ultimate disregard of human life, where patients are made to believe that they are draining the resources of the society, while there are other more deserving patients. This paper deliberates on the various reasons that ascertain the fact that euthanasia is no different from suicide and should not legalized on any grounds.
Euthanasia as a Right
Most people feel that everyone has a right to their life, which means that they also have a right to the death. This also translates to the idea that people have a right to their bodies. The entire idea is encased in the aspect of the right to suicide, where one is assisted by a physician to take their life. In most of the cases, patients are faced with terminal diseases which can be quite painful to the physical body. At the same time, there is also the emotional pain that results from knowing that a loved one is not likely to make through a certain period (Downie, 2004). As a result, most of the people and professionals feel that there is need to have a provision that allows patients and their loved ones to have the chance to end life in a dignified manner, where with the help of health professionals, they are able to induce death.
In the past, most of the people have found it much easier to travel to other countries where they the law allows for people to partake of mercy killings. Most of this people travelling to abroad to have a chance to end their lives are wealthy. This does not justify the fact that every other citizens is equal, as those who have the means can choose what happens to them. In reality, even when families take their loved ones to end their lives in foreign lands they are not prosecuted for the supposedly heinous acts. This creates some form of ambiguity in how the law is followed (Manning, 1998).
Mercy killings like most other aspects can be controlled with safeguards. This means that laws can be formulated on the aspects of what are the appropriate conditions that have to be met before a patient is allowed to take their lives. This means that the patient would for example; be in great pain, must be competent intellectually, an adult and has to be terminally ill.
Negative impacts of Euthanasia
With reference to the aspect of taking the mercy killing as a right to anyone that has chronic disease, mentally ill or old, this is misguided according to the religious platforms. Most of the religious groups do not offer the right to anyone to take their live. This also includes the fact that no one regardless of their status has the right to take a person’s life (Dowbiggin, 2003). Specifically, the doctors or medical teams do not have the duty to kill. This also goes against the famous maxim that is used in the medical fields which states; do not harm. This means that the doctors are health to a higher standard and are not allowed to do harm to their patient. In this case they are supposed to offer the bests solutions without prejudice. As such, no one should take their life or offer assistance to death even for patients that are going through chronic diseases, old or mentally ill.
The next level concern comes from the fact that; this could lead to increased incidences of suicide. It is argued that people that take their lives or make attempts to do the same are mentally ill or have form psychological problem (Cavan, 2000). While this may be true, the fact that most of the people that have opted to take their own life with the help of physicians can also be counted in this group. Ideally, the two sets of people choose to die because they are going through some difficult times in their lives. For the patients, they have a chronic disease which forces them to form an opinion that their lives are not going to get any better. For the people that attempt or those that go through with it, their situation is the same; as they are also going through a difficult moment in their lives and they do not feel strong enough to face it. As such, this could increase the number of people that take they lives as they feel entitled to take their lives. This means that as people feel entitled to their lives, the attempt levels will change to actual suicides (Biggs, 2001).
Quite a number of studies have been conducted where the euthanasia has been found to safe lives especially in the Netherlands. The truth of the matter is that there has been more deaths that could have been avoided physicians take upon themselves to take life. In one of the studies that were conducted in Britain, where euthanasia is highly allowed, there are more than 57, 000 deaths that take place every year all of whom are forced (McDougall, Gorman & Roberts, 2007). This indicates that, while the physicians are supposed to save the patients, most of them choose to take their lives. Most of these people are just shoved to their deaths and they are not told that the efforts to sustain their lives have been suspended. All this takes place in the notion that they will die eventually, which is actually a decision made by the physicians on behalf of the patient and their families regardless of the fact that they should be involved (Jackson, 2005).
Some of the researches have cited that there being some forms of safeguards will reduce the aspect of involuntary deaths (Tulloch, 2007). Ironically, this is not the case, this is due to the act that for every five people that die on their own consent there is at least one person that does not get to have a say in their death (Paterson, 2008). What is more complicated is the fact that, when these kinds of cases are brought to courts, they always fail and justice for the families goes down the drain. In places such Belgium, where euthanasia is widely used, statistics indicate that despite that fact there are provisions for doctors to have the patients consent to their deaths, there are more than 32% people that die without it. In Belgium, more than half of the cases are not reported despite the fact that there are requirements to have the doctors’ report for any assisted deaths. This is due to the fact that most of the cases do not meet the legal threshold and requirement to carry them out in the first place. While the doctors are the ones that are authorized to give administer these cases, it turns out that most of the time it is the nurses that are involved. This means that majority of the cases when patient are taken through mercy killing, the qualified doctors are not consulted (Cavan, 2000). The numbers of cases that take this route are estimated to be more than 92%. While it may be a high figure, this is the number of traced cases, which means that with the addition of those that have not traced, and the number could soar to disturbing levels.
Pain has been sported as one of the most crucial aspects that campaigner for euthanasia use. Ideally, patients that have terminal illness go through excruciating pain, which campaigners and part of the public feel that would be reduced with assisted death. However, the main issue is that this is avoiding the fact there are effective methods to handle the pain some of the patients may be going through. As such, debating whether to kill a patient because they are going th...