EUTHANASIA

9 Pages 2189 Words

of compassion” and “mercy killing” are most commonly used when referring to euthanasia. Do not confuse the meaning of euthanasia with the meaning of assisted suicide there are two separate acts with two separate meanings. Assisted suicide is when “someone provides an individual with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life.”(Euthanasia Definitions) “In euthanasia, one person does something that directly kills another.”(International)
Understanding where the word euthanasia originated from and what it means is the first step. Now understanding the meaning and the difference between the different types of euthanasia is the next step. The actions of euthanasia are broken down into two major categories: passive and active. “Passive euthanasia involves not doing something to prevent death.”(Beauchamp) This is when the health care provider discontinues life-sustaining treatments to the patient to speed up the dieing process. “Active euthanasia involves painlessly putting individuals to death for merciful reasons.”(Beauchamp) With active euthanasia a health care worker takes “active measures to end a patients life, such as by directly administering a lethal dose of a drug. Of the two actions that can be taken active euthanasia is the most controversial and is to date illegal in the United States.
Passive euthanasia is “hastening the death of a person by altering some form of support and letting nature take its course.”(Robinson) Examples of this are removal of life support, removal of necessary medication, withholding food and water, or by lethal injection. Of the stated examples lethal injections is the most common of them all. Giving a patient large does of morphine to control the pain, knowing that the morphine will not only relieve the pain but it will also suppress respiration and cause death earlier then it otherwise would have happened. Most often this action is taken wi...