Human Euthanasia

Dillon Lasay, Tracy Harrison, Antoni Staley

Jeremy Burris        

ENG 111

24 November 2014

Human Euthanasia

Most people have known someone who has died: a neighbor, a friend, or a family member. Death, like birth, is an experience no human being can avoid. Yet in the past century in technologically advanced countries there had been dramatic changes in how and where people die. For most of history, people usually died at home. In the United States today, most of the deaths take place in hospitals or nursing homes. Although patients often benefit from the care and services provided by hospitals, this distancing of the dying from the home has affected the way Americans think and feel about death. The different and sometimes opposing ways members of a society view death and life drive the euthanasia debate. For at its simplest, euthanasia involves the decision to end life. Even in the most terrible of circumstances, when death is seen as providing desperately needed relief, the act of ending a life causes grave concern. The debate over euthanasia is understandably clouded by emotion and different points of view. Human Euthanasia is an emotionally charged subject for those who argue for, and those who argue against it. Many argue that one should have the freedom of choice to decide on how and when one dies.

Various forms that euthanasia can take include: passive, active, voluntary and involuntary.

Passive euthanasia is withholding of common treatments such as disconnecting a feeding tube, and switching off life support. The palliative terminal care, when providing a pain-killer, such as morphine, to the patient might result in decreasing the patient's life-span and thus causing indirect euthanasia (Julesz Máté). Passive euthanasia is usually defined as withdrawing medical treatment with the deliberate intention of causing the patient's death. For example, if a patient requires kidney dialysis to survive, and the doctors disconnect the dialysis machine, the patient will presumably die fairly soon. Perhaps the classic example of passive euthanasia is a “do not resuscitate order”. Normally if a patient has a heart attack or similar sudden interruption in life functions, medical staff will attempt to revive them. If they make no such effort but simply stand and watch as the patient dies, this is passive euthanasia.

        Active Euthanasia is taking specific steps to cause the patient's death, such as injecting the patient with poison. In practice, this is usually an overdose of pain-killers or sleeping pills. The difference between “active” and “passive” is that active euthanasia involves an action that is done to end the patient's life; in passive euthanasia, something is not done that would have preserved the patient's life. An important idea behind this distinction is that in “passive euthanasia”, the doctors are not actively killing anyone, they are simply not saving him. While we would usually applaud someone who saves another person's life, we do not normally condemn someone for failing to do so. If a person rushed into a burning building and carried someone out to safety, that person would be considered a hero. However, if someone were to witness a burning building and hear people screaming for help, without showing any concern and just stood on the sidewalk looking on, what would we consider this person for their inactions?  Surely there would not be not be any prosecution for homicide. Thus, proponents of euthanasia say that while we can debate whether active euthanasia should be legal, there can be no debate about passive euthanasia: A person cannot prosecuted someone for failing to save a life. Even if we think it would be good for people to save a life, we cannot make it illegal for people to not save a life, or for everyone in the country who did not save a life today be arrested.

        In practice, this distinction can get a bit hazy. It is like the old joke about the child who says to his teacher, “Do you think it is right to punish someone for something that he didn't do?” “Why, of course not,” the teacher replies. “Good,” the child says, “Because I did not do my homework.” In fact we have many laws that penalize people for what they did not do. We cannot simply decide not to pay income taxes, or not bother to send children to school, or not to obey a policemen's order to put down a gun.

        The most common method of euthanasia in the United States today is withholding food and fluids in a healthcare setting. In other words, the patient is starved to death. This is routinely classified as “passive euthanasia”. But in any other circumstances, if someone is locked in a room and had been kept away from all the food so that he starved to death, there could surely be prosecution not just for kidnapping – locking the person in the room – but also for homicide.  There is sincere doubt that a court would pay much attention to a defense based on the argument that this person got killed, but simply failed to save their life.

“Voluntary euthanasia” occurs when the client or client family gives consent for the action that will result in death (Pearson 176). “Involuntary euthanasia” is when a patient’s life is ended without their consent. This may mean that the patient is kicking and screaming and begging for life, but in practice today, it usually means that the patient is unconscious, unable to communicate, or is too sick and weak to be aware of what is happening or to take any action on his own behalf.

        While this distinction appears clear – the patient has either willing agreed to euthanasia or they have not – it is often made ambiguous in court cases and some public debate.

        It is not uncommon for courts to declare someone “legally incompetent”. This means that the person is mentally incapable of making rational decisions on their own, and the court believes that they are unable to make informed decisions and/or to communicate them to others. The judge then appoints a guardian to make decisions for this person. Usually this will be a close relative, such as a spouse, parents, or children. However, if no such person is available, or if the judge believes that none of the relatives have this person's best interests at heart, then someone else may be appointed: a social worker, a lawyer, etc. Children are routinely considered legally incompetent, and their parents are expected to make decisions for them. No one asks a two-year-old whether or not he wants to go to the dentist: that decision is normally made for him by his parents. A judge may conclude that a person is senile, mentally retarded, suffering from delusions, or has some other psychological problem that makes it impossible for him to make truly informed, rational decisions. If someone is in a coma or is otherwise so sick that she is unable to communicate, then even if she is capable of making informed decisions, there is no way for anyone else to know what her decisions are. When courts declare someone legally incompetent and appoint a guardian, any decisions that the guardian makes are, for legal purposes, considered to be decisions of the incompetent person. A little thought will show that this must be in place in order for the system to work. There would be little point in saying that the appointed guardian is authorized to make decisions for this comatose person, except that he does not have the authority to sign anything that would otherwise require his signature. That would exclude almost all important decisions. But it can also lead to legal statements that are very misleading: Suppose Nancy Smith convinces a court that her grandfather, Fred Jones, is senile, and she is appointed his guardian. Then she decides that she wants to have him euthanized. He objects but he is too old and sick to fight her in court herself, so he gets his other granddaughter, Mary Brown, to fight for him. Because Nancy Smith's decisions are legally considered to be Fred Jones's decisions, the case will be referred to as "Brown versus Jones", and court documents will routinely describe this as Fred Jones choosing euthanasia and Mary Brown attempting to overrule this decision. News reports on the court case may or may not make clear who actually made the euthanasia decision.