Euthanasia

chillibreeze writer — Ayananta

The House of Lords Committee on Medical Ethics defines euthanasia as "a deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering.” If a person is terminally ill, is suffering unbearable pain, and has absolutely no scope of further improvement, s/he might voluntarily opt to end his/her life with the help of a doctor. Euthanasia is therefore also known as physician assisted suicide. It has to be a completely informed decision taken by the patient and the request for euthanasia should persist over time.

Euthanasia is an extremely controversial issue across the medical and legal fraternity and is legal in only a few parts of the world. In an ideal world, euthanasia might seem to be an extremely noble option of relieving a person from relentless and unbearable pain. But this practice comes with certain inherent risks and can be misused by people with ignoble intentions.

Unscrupulous doctors, under the influence of other people, have been known to treat the patient in such a way that it brings intolerable or insurmountable pain to the patient who in turn chooses to end his life or commit euthanasia. The doctor might well defend himself by citing the unbearable pain as a side effect of the treatment process. Another loophole of legalizing euthanasia is that the patient party may stop or not at all start the treatment of a medically useless and hopeless treatment. The other noteworthy shortfall of legalizing euthanasia is that a patient might be put under immense force to stop or not start a treatment eventually leading to indescribable pain which in turn induces the patient to commit euthanasia.

Most of the countries across the world have not legalized mercy killing (euthanasia). However, Netherlands legalized euthanasia in the year 2002 and the practice is also legal in some parts of the US. Dutch law lays down that euthanasia and physician assisted suicide are not punishable if carried out with due care. There were 1626 cases of euthanasia reported in Netherlands in 2003. The sedative sodium thiopental is intravenously injected into the patient’s body which leads him to deep coma. Once it is confirmed that the patient has slipped into deep coma, typically after a few minutes, he is administered Pancuronium to stop the breathing and cause death.

The risks associated with euthanasia outweigh the advantages. The shortfalls of this practice are such that many can take advantage and commit crimes in the name of euthanasia. No doubt, this is a noble way to relieve a person from excruciating pain but euthanasia might lead to increase of crimes related to it.

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Chillibreeze's disclaimer: This is a contributed article and was published on Chillibreeze in June, 2010. The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not reflect the views of Chillibreeze as a company. Chillibreeze has a strict anti-plagiarism policy. Please contact us to report any copyright issues related to this article. The relevance of the facts and figures cited (if any) could change after a period of time.

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