Mercy Killing
or Just Plain Killing: The Euthanasia Debate
For as long as people have been around, we have been dying. While this very well may seem to be pointing out the obvious, so many of us forget that we, as humans, are mortal beings. Our life span is definitely finite, and it should be. Just think what would happen if nobody ever died. Even though we are mortal, we try to hang onto our lives as long as we can. Fear of death and wanting to live forever are, after all, part of human nature. Sometimes, however, medicine takes advantage of this aspect of humanity and, to a great extent, capitalizes on it. While it is certainly true that one goal of medicine has always been to prolong life, ...
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To complicate things further, there is also voluntary euthanasia, “Cases in which patient requests to be killed, and dies as a result of action taken by another person,” involuntary euthanasia; “cases in which no action is requested because the patient is unconscious, senile, or otherwise incapable of making a request, but the person is allowed to die or is killed,” and nonvoluntary euthanasia; “cases in which a conscious, terminally ill patient states that they do not want to die, but is allowed to die or is killed anyway” (http://valdosta.peachnet.edu). While an individual may advocate one form of euthanasia, it is not uncommon for the same person to be completely against another form. There are cases in which euthanasia is wrong, especially cases involving conscious people who are not really in a lot of pain, seeking death. In these cases, some kind of counseling would make a lot more sense than just accepting that these people think they need to die and ...
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than trying to do something about this would be closer to murder.
Another issue involves how natural these things are; on the one hand, euthanasia, especially active euthanasia, seems unnatural, on the other, so do some other medical procedures. It is not exactly natural, after all to keep somebody alive with all kinds of tubes running in and out of his or her body. Here is where the distinction between illnesses and afflictions that can be healed or cured and ones that cannot becomes important. There is a large difference between somebody who wants to die because he gets in a car accident and breaks a few bones, and someone who wants to die because she has terminal cancer and will ...
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Mercy Killing. (2004, October 24). Retrieved December 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Mercy-Killing/16380
"Mercy Killing." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 24 Oct. 2004. Web. 23 Dec. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Mercy-Killing/16380>
"Mercy Killing." Essayworld.com. October 24, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Mercy-Killing/16380.
"Mercy Killing." Essayworld.com. October 24, 2004. Accessed December 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Mercy-Killing/16380.
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