Professionals and the Euthanasia Issue - Essay Example

Euthanasia In April, 2005, the Washington Times reminded its readers of the March, 1976 the case of Karen Ann Quinlan, a young woman who had been in a coma for a number of years. Her family filed suit to have the life support system that was maintaining Karen Quinlan in a comatose state disconnected. The case was heard before the New Jersey Supreme Court, and it was the decision of that court that there existed an “implied” right to privacy under the US Constitution, and the court ruled in favor of Karen Ann Quinlan’s family, allowing them to quietly and with little public spectacle disconnect Karen from the life support system that had kept her technically alive. The case of Karen Ann Quinlan was the first case in American history establishing a right to die, which has since that time given rise to the much debated question of euthanasia; do persons with terminal illnesses have a right to choose how and when they die? There is no easy answer to this question, since both sides raise valid and emotional points for and against euthanasia. Robert M. Baird and Stuart E. Rosenbaum (1989) examined the moral implications of euthanasia. One of the first points that the writers pose is that of physicians taking on the responsibility to end life, rather than preserve it (p 25). Additionally, the writers identify the problems associated with physicians – or anyone else for that matter – being responsible for deciding when a human being, suffering a terminal illness, should die. Not least amongst which is the issue of monitoring such decisions, and whether or not it is in fact possible to monitor such actions (p. 27). What, Baird and Rosenbaum ask, happens when physicians or family members take into account issues such as cost of maintaining a loved one’s life come into play in making a decision as to whether or not to intervene in the process of dying (p. 27). The fact is, the authors concludes, that really is no way to take out the considerations that come to play in such a decision making process, and it is this inability to monitor the process and insure that it is one based solely on the needs and the desire of the person who is suffering the terminal illness (p 28). The authors go on to call upon the medical profession to remove themselves from the decision making process that would involve euthanasia, and more importantly from the act of administering lethal doses of drugs that would bring about a patient’s death (p. 28). Doctors, the authors maintain, must kill their patients (p. 28). The authors go on to discuss “the sanctity of life, versus quality of life, suggesting that it is the sanctity of life that takes precedent, and it is about ethics they suggest (p. 85). “It makes no difference whether such an ethics system is grounded in theistic or a naturalistic philosophy. We may believe that God wills human happiness or that man’s happiness is, as Protagoras thought, a self-validating standard of the good and the right. But what counts ethically is whether human needs come first, not whether the ultimate sanction is transcendental or secular (p. 85).” There are, however, those who would and do argue against Baird and Rosenbaum, even countries. The Netherlands, Michael Fumento (1995), is one such country where assisted suicide, or euthanasia is permitted and it is, Fumento says, a slippery slope that should serve as a cautionary tale for the United States, especially when the battle for and against assisted suicide has been going on in the State of Oregon for a number of years now (p. 1). It’s a slippery slope, writes Fumento, in that if we allow something that is perceived as relatively harmless, such as assisted suicide, or euthanasia, then that simplicity has the potential for becoming something much more, and the only thing that could amount to much more is murder. In the Netherlands and in the Oregon law, the intention is to provide assisted suicide to patients who request it. In other words, it is not to be administered against a patient’s will, or at the discretion of a caregiver. Fumento echoes the Baird and Rosenbaum thinking that it is simply not possible to provide oversight as to the process to insure that people who choose to live will not become victims of people who might wish them dead (p. 1). In the Netherlands, like Oregon, the patient’s wishes were supposedly the driving force for the practice of assisted suicide (p. 1). “That changed in 1973, when a doctor went on trial for killing her terminally ill mother with morphine. The court began a long process of slowly eating away at the law by convicting the woman, but giving her a mere suspended sentence of a week in jail, plus a year’s probation. Probation violation would have been difficult, since presumably the woman had no mothers left to kill (p. 1),” writes Fumento. There simply is no way to provide oversight to assisted suicides to insure that people who wish to live do not become prey or victims of another person’s choices in that regard; even worse, out right murder. This is what is now occurring in the Netherlands, since they have done away with the element of “patient’s choice,” in that physicians are now permitted to administer euthanasia to patients without the patients expressing the desire for such, so long as the physicians follow certain guidelines (p. 1). In the Netherlands, physicians were allowed to administer euthanasia so long as the patient suffered from a terminal illness, but that too, writes Fumento, soon become irrelevant under Dutch law. Fumento points to the case of Peter Admiraal, a Delft anesthesiologist who in 1985 was tried for administering a lethal dose of anesthetic to a young girl who suffered from multiple sclerosis (p. 1). The life expectancy of the young girl was undetermined, suggests Fumento, and she could have lived for years had she not been murdered by Admiraal (p.1). The Dutch court found Admiraal’s actions within the definition of the law pertaining to the young girl’s disability as being fatal, regardless of how long she might have lived (p.1). It is indeed a disturbing case when the considering the patient had no choice, and made no request to die; and to think that while in fact disabled, she might have contributed something, or benefited from her life, which was cut short by another’s decision that the quality of her life based on her disability made life not worth living. It is perhaps the element of humanity that makes assisted suicide so attractive as to be voted into law, as evidenced by the States of Oregon’s enactment of such a law. To relieve the pain and suffering of a person who is suffering a slow death from a fatal disease seems on the surface, at least in modern times, an act of kindness. However, it was not so long ago, author Henry Friedlander reminds us, that the world stood in shock and horror as the details of Germany’s Nazi’s euthanasia program were revealed (p. 1). It was more than relieving human suffering Friedlander writes, “The policy of exclusion followed and drew upon more than fifty years of scientific opposition to the equality of man. Since the turn of the century, the German elite – that is, the members of the educated professional classes – had increasingly accepted an ideology of human inequality (p.).” In other words, by the act which itself seems humane, we are losing our humanity in that humanity derives from our ability to be sympathetic and empathetic and to strive to improve the quality of life of those whose sufferings invoke in us such feelings of humanity. When we become indifferent – which surely we must in the face of assisted suicide – to the pain and suffering of another human being, we have surrendered our humanity. In Nazi Germany, it began with the exclusion of the handicapped, then killing of the handicapped, which led to establishing killing centers to kill the handicapped (pp. 23-263). That eventually evolved to a more massive genocide and the imprisonment of Jews, the maimed, the handicapped and the “final solution” says Friedlander (p. 284). In an article published in the Harvard Journal of Law, Neil M. Gorsuch (2000) writes about assisted suicide, or euthanasia. In America, Gorsuch writes, the issue of assisted suicide began to take on a different perspective when Dr. Jack Kervorkian assisted a forty-five year old woman suffering from Alzheimers in ending her life (p. 1). Kervorkian created and a suicide machine, which allowed the patient to actually be responsible for initiating the release of the drug into her system which would bring about death (p. 1). In this way, Kervorkian was able to present himself as an angel of mercy, assisting, he claimed, some 130 terminally ill patients in accomplishing death (p.1). Indeed, Kervorkian actually split the American public according to those who perceived him as an angel of mercy, and those who perceived him as murderer, a monster who preyed upon the weakened emotions of people who were terminally ill (p. 1). While Kervorkian was eventually convicted of murder, her was staunchly defended by the American Civil Liberties Union on the basis of his having assisted the patients, in that he did not actually initiate the flow of drugs into the bodies of the patients that resulted in their deaths (p.1). What Kervorkian did succeed in doing was bringing into full focus and attention the issue of assisted suicide in America, presenting it as a “right to die” campaign, such as lead to the Oregon law allowing assisted suicide of terminally ill patients. Like Fumento, Gorsuch discusses the Netherland’s deterioration of law with regard to assisted suicides (p. 1). Gorsuch cites the changing American perspective with regard to assisted suicide, noting the effort in California to strike down that state’s law banning assisted suicide, which in 1988 did not even have enough support from California voters to make it onto the ballot as a referendum (p. 1). Then, just four years later, the referendum made it onto the California ballot, and was supported by some forty-eight percent of California voters (p. 1). In 1991, the state of Washington followed California with a referendum for that achieved more than forty-six percent voter endorsements from Washington state’s voters (p.1). It followed in 1994 that Oregon, by a small margin, was voted into law (p. 1). Legal maneuvers by opponents of the law, caused it to be delayed for another three years (p.1). David Steves and Tim Christie (2004) reported that U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, a staunch opponent of assisted suicide, challenged Oregon’s law in federal court, and lost, when in 2004, “The 2-1 ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco represents the second setback for U.S. Attorney John Ashcroft, who had issued a directive to doctors in Oregon warning they would be sanctioned or face criminal charges if they prescribed lethal doses of medication to dying patients (p. 1). The decision left Oregon’s citizens split on the issue of assisted suicide. “It’s an affirmation of the judgment of Oregonians that offering dying people choice, dignity and control at the end of life is the right thing to do,” Steves and Christie quote Barbara Coombs Lee, an advocate of Oregon’s Death With Dignity Act, as saying (p.1). On the opposing side, Steves and Christie quote Dr. Kenneth Stevens as saying, “I and many other doctors feel that purposefully causing a patient’s death by writing a prescription for a lethal medication is not a legitimate medical purpose. Assisted suicide is a reversal of a proper role of a doctor to heal, and console patients (p. 1).” Charles Miller spoke on behalf of the U.S. Department of Justice with regard to the 9th Circuit’s ruling, saying only that the Department was reviewing the decision (p. 1). While Oregon’s attorney general, who successfully met the DOJ’s challenge, said, “We frankly don’t know what to expect from the U.S. Department of Justice. But we are prepared to continue with a vigorous defense of the state’s right to regulate the practice of medicine (p. 1).” The issue of assisted suicide continues to be one of moral and legal debate in America today. Whether America will go down the same slippery slope as the Netherlands has yet to be determined, but the road will no doubt be contentious and strongly debated in professional and legal circles around the country. Works Cited Baird, Robert M., and Stuart E. Rosenbaum, eds. The Moral Issues The Moral Issues. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989. Questia. 9 May 2006 . Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995. Questia. 9 May 2006 . Fumento, Michael. "Euthanasia in Netherlands Is Cautionary Tale for U.S." Insight on the News 17 Apr. 1995: 34+. Questia. 9 May 2006 . Gorsuch, Neil M. "The Right to Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia." Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 23.3 (2000): 599. Questia. 9 May 2006 . "Oregon's Assisted Suicide Law Upheld." The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR) : A1. Questia. 9 May 2006 . Read More