Euthanasia
6 Pages 1501 Words
Euthanasia
I’m sure everyone here has heard of Dr. Kevorkian a.k.a.
Dr,Death. He has helped 120 people die. Recently, in April of 1999,
he was convicted of murder for helping a man with a terminal illness
die. Should he have been convicted? In my opinion NO! Why? I
firmly believe that in certain cases where suffering from a terminal
illness, (alzheimer’s, Multiple sclerosis, car accident leaving the
person like a vegetable, cancer) should be able to make the choice to
die with dignity. I know I would not want to live a life of constant
suffering in pain. Would you?
I will explain what Euthanasia is. The word Euthanasia comes
from the Greek language; eu means “good” and thantos means
“death”. The meaning of the word evolved from “good death”, and it
refers to the act of ending another person’s life, at their request, in
order to minimize suffering. There are two forms, one is Passive
Euthanasia and the other is Active Euthanasia.
Passive Euthanasia is the quick death of a person by, removing
life support equipment (respirator,etc.), or stopping medical
procedures, medications, or stopping food and water and allowing the
person to dehydrate or starve to death. These procedures are
performed on terminally ill patients, or suffering persons so that
natural death will occur sooner. It also is done on people who have
massive brain damage who are in a coma from which they will never
recover.
Active Euthanasia is the causingof the death of a person through
a direct action, like injecting a lethal drug to help the person end his
or her own life. Active Euthanasia is presently illegal, many
professionals claim that it is practiced secretly on a regular basis.
Active Ethanasia is very controversial, its argued that the patients
are not informed of what steps are being done to them or are forced
into agreeing to the act.
Assisted suicide refers to a situation in which information and o...