Euthanasia Should Not Be Legalized

An  article in http://www.teenink.com/, “Should Euthanasia Be Legalized?”, written by Hermi Rox, claims that Euthanasia should be legalized in the majority of the world because it is not ethical keeping alive and leaving terminally ill patient to suffer. So according to the author Rox,  the best way to end this physical suffering is Euthanasia. I disagree with the writer’s claim about legalizing euthanasia because the article only focuses on individual and family aspects of the patient but the social and religion aspects is not considered.

The author claims that euthanasia is not the practical of suicide if it is only deals with terminally ill patients. “I am not in any way supporting the general idea of suicide, the argument only deals with terminally ill patients.” As we know here even though it is only deals with terminally ill patient, the act of euthanasia is still a practical of suicide. If the patients have will and decide to end their life, it is kind of practical suicide. This claims supported in Meriam-Webster’s dictionary, the full definition of suicide, “the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally especially by a person of years of discretion and of sound mind”. And in fact suicide is not allowed in almost all human’s society and religion and also almost in all constitution.

The author states that euthanasia is relatively painless and the more accepted euthanasia is the passive one. “The actual euthanasia process is painless and can be done in two ways: actively or passively. Passive euthanasia involves gradually taking someone off of a medication that keeps them alive or disconnecting a person from a life support machine. This kind of euthanasia is the more accepted of the two.” Is passive euthanasia really painless here? Can taking off medication bring the patient to the death without suffering? Does disconnecting the patient from a life support machine give the high possibility to die? The writer doesn’t give his consistence here.  The function of medication is to support the sick organ to work well and give anestetic effect to decrease suffering. If the medication is stopped, function organ will get worse and the patient will have a great suffering especially to the sick organ. And also if we leaving the patient without medication or life support machine and hope the patient will die of their disease, can you ensure the patient will die? As human our prediction are not 100 percent true. In most religion states that the life of human is in God’s hand, only God who know when and where the person die. So I can say that passive euthanasia doesn’t fully support the definition of euthanasia.

In the article, the author makes a point about the physical pain patient with Hepatitis B  and pancreatic cancer. He states that it just inhumane not giving this patient a choice of death:”It just seems inhumane not giving them a choice of death over a life of suffering.” I partly agree with this statement. If you are this patient’s family, you will be sad watching your family in pain almost all the time. And as the patient’s family, you surely want to see the patient cure and hear no cry of pain. Because of this condition, it seems inhumane not allowing the patient’s will or decision to end his life. But in almost all religion, ending life is not allowed with the reason that life and death is in God’s hand. Euthanasia has two points which are against the religion, the patient’s will to end life and the practical of euthanasia which end the person’s life by the doctor. So it is really hard to use euthanasia in order to end the patient suffering.

In the article, Rox stresses that the high cost for keeping someone alive on machine should be donated for research cure. “Isn’t it better to perhaps donate that money to a foundation that aids in finding a cure for a disease rather than keeping a terminally ill patient alive on a machine?” I agree with this statement. It’s true that it is better to use this high cost  for curing disease than keeping someone who has no hope to be cured alive. With this money we can find new medication for disease and for this finding we can help many people to be cured rather than help one person by keeping him alive. But the same as I say in some paragraph before, taking someone off medication or disconnecting from life support machine is kind of practical suicide which is banned in many countries and religion. The analogy is like this, when you have a will to use the money for something else, you will hope the patient die so that there is no needed cost for keeping someone alive. This hope is banned by the religion and constitution because this hope will make the other person die.

Mr. Rox states in his article that the freedom to a dignified death should be given to everyone. “Shouldn’t the right to a dignified death be given to everyone; why not… But one freedom is missing: the freedom to a dignified death.” I totally disagree with this statement. If freedom to dignified death is legalized, there will be many people use this freedom unwisely. The analogy is like this, when you feel so sick and suffering because of the disease, you will try to find any way to relieve this suffering and you will think that death or anesthetic is the best way. In this condition you are not able to think wisely and if this freedom is legalized in long term there will be many people decide to use this freedom even though for stadium 2 cancer which still has high possibility to be cured. And for long legalization of course this freedom will be new culture of medication and will decrease the number of medication research.

The author mentions about healthcare proxy when he states that most people do not support euthanasia with the reason that the terminally ill patient has possibility not in the right state of mind: “…the possibility of slipping into unconsciousness, they will designate someone to makes decisions on their behalf. This is known as a healthcare proxy… The sick individual gives instructions to the proxy that in the event that if they do slip into a coma…” What is the relation healthcare proxy with the patient’s incompetent mind here? Healthcare proxy only receives the patients decision here while the patients do not able make decision wisely because of their mentally incompetent. This is the same as the patients decide themselves to end life and the healthcare proxy has no function. As I say before, the patient will tend to decide all the way which can end their suffering without consider it.

In summary, euthanasia is one way to solve the terminally ill patients’ suffering and sounds like very effective and relatively fast, but in fact euthanasia is a kind of practical suicide which is banned in most religions and constitutions in the world. So it is very hard to legalized euthanasia in the majority of the world for this reason.