Euthanasia – A Planned Full-stop
Somewhere in the world, an old man was on his death bed, doctors pumping life into him artificially. He wished to die peacefully in his own home, surrounded by his family, and not on some hospital bed. Placing this will in front of the doctor and his family members, he asked them to take him home when still alive and let him die at his own conditions. After all the arguments and looking at his irreversible medical condition, they had to comply with his wish and they arranged to take him home. Living at the mercy of a ventilator, he asked to be free of this life-support after he met all his family for the last time, dying happily surrounded by everyone that he loved. The old man chose what we today call Passive Euthanasia.
The word Euthanasia, widely known as mercy killing, has created a hustle enough to grab everybody’s attention today. Sometimes attached with sentiments, sometimes with controversies, and sometimes with ethics, it has divided the world population in two parts- those in favor of and those against. Coming from the Greek words- ‘Eu’ meaning good, and ‘Thanatosis’ meaning death, Euthanasia is basically a term for ‘Good Death’. It is a term used for what they call peaceful, dignified, easy, or gentle death.
Turning Back the Pages
In our history, we can find countless acts where hopelessly incurable patients were given easy death. Years ago, in Greece, patients with terminal illness suffering with a lot of pain were given a poisoned drink, in the form of a medicine, by the physicians in order to bring them an easy death. Also, in India, incurable patients were drowned in River Ganges, to release them from the life full of pain. These are the perfect examples of active euthanasia- an act to bring upon a deliberate and direct death to a patient. In ancient times passive euthanasia, correctly termed as orthothanasia, was also practiced. In this, the patients are allowed to die, by with-holding or withdrawing the treatment, rather than killing them directly. During the rise of Nazis, under a program to eliminate life unworthy of life, Hitler ordered the sick and disabled to be euthanized on large-scale, in 1939. Although all through the history most of the religions and philosophers deemed euthanasia as a sin or a crime, there were some who advocated the action, for good, bad, as well as horrendous reasons.
Forms of Euthanasia
There are various forms of Euthanasia- active and passive that we saw before, voluntary, non-voluntary, and involuntary, direct and indirect, and assisted suicide. Euthanizing a person on his/her own request is voluntary euthanasia. In non-voluntary euthanasia, a person is not in the condition to place the request or unable to make the choice, like a child or a mentally unfit patient, so someone on the behalf of them takes the decision. When the patient refuses to die and even then is euthanized, such a case falls under involuntary euthanasia and is mostly ruled as murder. In indirect euthanasia, a patient is given a treatment that has the side effect of speeding up the process of their death. This is usually done with the intention of reducing the pain and also called as palliative care today. As the motto is not to kill the patient but reduce the pain, it is accepted as euthanasia. In assisted suicide, a dying person who needs help to kill themselves is assisted in doing so to allow easy death.
Ethics around Euthanasia
The argument about the morality as well as the legality of mercy killing is age-old. It prevails even today and may exist always.
Most of the religions believe that the life is given to us by god and it is not ours to take. Moreover, euthanasia decreases our respect towards the sanctity of life, they argue. Although free to do our will, by taking someone’s life or helping in the act, we deny god’s right over our lives and hence euthanasia is morally unacceptable.
While this is the religious attitude, there are several practical reasons that put euthanasia under the bad light. People have argued about how there is no way to perfectly regulate euthanasia and how, once legalized, it can be misused to take somebody’s life for other benefits. There is an argument that voluntary euthanasia can be the beginning of the slippery slope towards the involuntary one. Then there is some philosophers’ long-standing feud about mercy killing not being in the best-interest of the patient and no living soul, in how much ever suffering, should be willing to kill themselves, under the pressure of euthanasia. They have also argued about how ending a person’s life not only affects him/her, but also their family and friends as well as society as a whole, and hence is not in the best interests of everyone. It is also said to give too much power to the doctors and hamper their commitment to the patients and demotivates the research of better cures. Many people believe that palliative care eliminates the need of euthanasia.
