Euthanasia

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I support euthanasia under the following conditions:

1) the patient decides himself, not the family or a doctor. The patient should decide himself while fully realising the consequences of the decision.

2) if the patient cannot decide himself due to coma and has never registered a letter stating he would approve euthanasia in certain circumstances, then it cannot be done. The patient alone has the right to make the decision.

3) a doctor should confirm the patient is terminally ill (although mental suffering should be treated in a different way and is harder to draw the line where to allow euthanasia and where not)

Generally, I support euthanasia. With the nuance that it should be ONLY the decision of the person undergoing the euthanasia.

This. And I believe it should be non state mandated. As for the abortion question and death penalty, the death penalty is wrong, since only the person's deity and or themselves should be able to decide if they die. In addition, the state often kills mercilessly, and it is a slippery slope. As for abortion, I am mixed. I am against the intentional killing (surgical), unless the mother's life is in danger, since there is no room for the intentions. As for medicinal abortion, I am split. I don't think the government should ban any substance, but at the same time I don't think a substance should be used to kill a child. I guess you could sell amedicine that does that, but as for assisted abortions, I am not in favor. As for the Hipo oath, I think that should be up to the medical community. I think that they should ban abortion in the Hipo oath, but not for euthanasia. With the abortion bit, after the zygotic stage (which in my opinion it's ok to remove it), I think the baby start to form, and thus, it would be wrong for a doctor to deprive that individual the right to eventual self ownership. That is why I suppor ttechnology, which can bridge that baby's right to self ownership, and the mother's right to do with her body what she so chooses.

I pretty much agree with this.

With 3), I would say that mental suffering alone is not enough. If a person received an injury that has given them a new disability that isn't life threatening but isn't curable, then they may request euthanasia at a point in the future (maybe a year). If at any time in the year they change their mind, because life when paralysed from the neck down isn't as bad as they thought it would be, then they can back out.

That sounds reasonable. The most convincing argument against euthanasia I've seen so far is when gray legal areas allow people to be euthanized against their will, and those seem to take care of it.

Completely agree.

I have some difficulty with the inherent contradictions within the Hippocratic oath. There isn't a doctor out there who has done no harm. The physicians role is to weigh benefits of treatment and procedure against the likely (or potential) benefits. Most medications have harmful side effects, but they are prescribed because the plus side outweighs the minus side. The same goes for chemotherapy, radiation therapy, hormonal therapy, nuclear medicine studies, surgery, and the treatment and management of countless disorders, conditions and diseases.

With euthanasia, it boils down to:
Is the individual's life being prolonged more or less beneficial?

^this^

I think people have the right to kill themselves if they are terminally ill. We also have to beware of the slippery slope leading to people feeling obligated to kill themselves if terminally ill.

New Zealand is set to debate whether or not to legalise euthanasia in 2014. A bill was submitted to Parliament last year, but has been withdrawn until after next year's national election, when it'll likely be resubmitted. And then the arguing will begin – probably on the scale of the same-sex marriage debate this year.

Actually, there was a short TV segment in NZ debating the issue a couple of days ago, outlining the main points on both sides (I think):
http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast-news/new-re ... eo-5658200

Personally, I support legalising euthanasia for terminally ill patients. I haven't made up my mind yet on a broader right to die for any person. I'm also concerned about some of the outcomes mentioned in the video above, based on this report (which I haven't fully read yet).

Mental suffering is a very grey area. In Belgium we had a woman who felt born in the wrong body and wanted to be a man. She underwent surgeries to have a sex change, but the surgery went wrong and she had to live on as being neither really man nor really woman. That + the disillusion caused deep depressions and a loss of appetite to live. After many testimonies from family and upon request of the person himself/herself, euthanasia was applied. It was a controversial topic though.


The death penalty and euthanasia cannot be compared. Nobody should judge who has the right to live or who doesn't. If a person himself in full consciousness wishes to die, that's a different angle. Also, the death penalty leaves people count the days till a planned death while they're in terrible living conditions on death row ; someone wishing euthanasia can spend his last days in much more comfortable ways and willl not mentally suffer the same way as it was his own choice to terminate life. As for the death penalty: "in the name of justice, do not become what you try to deter". Euthanasia is a whole different subject. I also doubt the same "lethal drugs" are used, often euthanasia is done by stopping the machines that keep a patient alive and they usually die in their sleep pretty painless.

By the way, why do abortion and capital punishment always occur in topics discussing euthanasia? Euthanasia is completely different.

Agreed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnWDfc2fS54[/youtube]

Conservatives don't want the elderly to get free health coverage but it was hard to argue that a 90 year old woman would waste tax dollars on abortions. So Conservatives invented the euthanasia scare as a moral excuse so that Medicare can be defunded leaving older people destitute.

I'm at a loss, I agree with you and sonofghandi on this.

I have always believed in this. I also believe if a person is brain dead, they should be let go.

Do I support it?

No.

While the idea of Euthanasia sounds good on paper for the terminally ill, it is heavily fraught with major issues. Once it becomes a solution in the list for the resolution of an illness, it eventually feels like a viable solution to other medical issues.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070710/

From a medical perspective:

"Although the initial intent was to limit euthanasia and assisted suicide to a last-resort option for a very small number of terminally ill people, some jurisdictions now extend the practice to newborns, children, and people with dementia. A terminal illness is no longer a prerequisite."

And what is telling about the patient wanting to die:
"Oregon requires that a patient be referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist for treatment if the prescribing or consulting physician is concerned that the patient’s judgment is impaired by a mental disorder such as depression. In 2007, none of the people who died by lethal ingestion in Oregon had been evaluated by a psychiatrist or a psychologist, despite considerable evidence that, compared with non-depressed patients, patients who are depressed are more likely to request euthanasia and that treatment for depression will often result in the patient rescinding the request."

Here is another, from a medical journal:

http://www.bcmj.org/mds-be/legalization ... eneficence

"Euthanasia also violates the principle of autonomy, or self-determination, and therefore contradicts the claim of euthanasia proponents who say we all have the “right to die.”

Allowing euthanasia does not mean that the patient is allowed to die at his or her own choosing; it means that the physician is allowed to cause the death of the patient.[1]

In other words, it is not a right that an individual enjoys, but the granting of permission to another to transgress. First, the patient is inherently vulnerable because of his or her position within the medical hierarchy. The patient relies on the physician not only for the evaluation of competence after the prognosis, as explained above, but for the prognosis itself.

For example, the physician’s declaration that no hope exists for improving the pa­tient’s pain management will determine what happens, regardless of whether the possibility of pain relief exists, unknown to the physician.

In the Nancy B. case, a female patient hospitalized in Quebec was desolate and dependent, and requested that her respirator be removed.

The Coalition of Provincial Organizations of the Handicapped (COPOH) questioned whether Nancy B. was truly offered or given clear information about achievable quality of life experienced by people living in the community with mech­anical ventilation.[6]

In this case, her autonomy was compromised by her intellectual submission to the pro­fession of medicine represented by the physician."