I apologize for the delay in putting this on the blog. Some additional questions we had prepared for class, but did not have time to discuss include: 1. Is your view or euthanasia that of a narrow or broad interpretation? Do you believe that there is a difference between “killing” and “allowing to die”? Why or why not? 2. Do you find a type of euthanasia, active or passive, more acceptable than the other? Why or why not? 3. What is your stance on self-sacrificial and coerced deaths? Are they suicides? 4. Is there any preferable alternative to euthanasia?
I set out to answer these questions last night and I ended taking a very long detour and questioning my own existing beliefs on this issue.
I believe that everyone absolutely has the right to end their own life, provided they are competent to make this decision. The difficult aspect of this is if a doctor can legally assist and what role they are able to play. I think that it is perhaps a positive thing for euthanasia to be illegal in most states. It is such a delicate issue that their truly is no room for error or lapses in judgment. Even with euthanasia being illegal in most states, it is not taking away an individuals right to make the decision; it is making it harder for them to make a potentially wrong and irreversible decision.
Its hard to fully wrap your head around such a complex issue as this because we can't fully understand what it would be like in a position like this unless we were actually there. A person deserves to have help to ensure that the process can be as dignified as possible. This isn't something that just any doctor should be able to do (nor would everyone want to)as it goes against their typical duty of saving or curing someone.
I do not know what I can concretely say about my opinions of euthanasia other than everyone deserves the right to make this decision. Most all other aspects are unique to each person and their own beliefs and wishes. There is something incredibly difficult with watching someone straddle the very delicate line between life and death and removing their last leg across the line for the final time.
I personally believe that there is a difference between “killing” and “allowing to die.” Killing is active, whereas allowing one to die is passive. One who kills is putting direct effort toward reversing the vitality of one’s life; on the flipside, one who allows someone to die is refusing to perform actions that he or she knows are needed in order to sustain life. While these two mediums are altogether different, the purpose each achieves is one in the same: death. So, the difference involves the means, not the end. I don’t believe that either active or passive euthanasia is acceptable. Why is it any other human’s place to decide when one’s time to die has come? What we perceive may be pain and suffering may not be a prompt to kill someone. If either passive or active euthanasia was acceptable, the case would be plain and simple: a human would be saying that it is indeed okay to oversee the death of someone else. Euthanasia is one of the most controversial topics in the Catholic Church. Per the literal definition of suicide as “to kill one’s self,” self-sacrificial and coerced deaths are suicides. Such a distinction entails the means vs. ends question once again. The ends, in this case, is suicide, and the means are the various methods by which one’s life ends. While most people generally consider suicide as an intentional end to one’s life because of social reasons, suicide has other causes as well. There is no preferable alternative to euthanasia. Something that continuously presents itself in my head during talk about euthanasia is hospice, but under rational thought, these are not two like entities. Hospice provides comfort to the irreversibly sick by eliminating suffering, while euthanasia disregards the question of terminality and ends one’s life based on others’ demands. Each of these topics is controversial, so I’m sure opinions would vary.
After thinking on this topic for more than an hour I concluded that I fall closer to the narrow interpretation of euthanasia. I think that killing and allowing to die are two separate things. Killing someone generally speaking killing someone usually involves the active ending or direct end to a life. Allowing someone to die is more of an indirect way as an end of one’s life. With self sacrificial and coerced deaths I would not consider them suicides because they are not directly taking their lives. When someone’s freedom is limited I think that the question of is it suicide is harder to answer.
I think for myself the large moral problem that arises when I think about Euthanasia is whether we have the right to end another human’s life even if they give consent to do so. The problem for me lies in the question of autonomy or free will we have as human beings. Like Ben said I think the problem of using people as a means to an end rather than people as an end in themselves. While I think that currently euthanasia is moral problem for myself, I would say that having a trained professional end a life would be better than having someone like a family member or person who is untrained in the matter ending their life because doctors have set procedures and plans in place to make it less problematic.
As I stated in class I think that physician assisted suicide is an acceptable result for someone suffering from a degenerative disease such as Huntington’s. In cases like that I don’t really think that there is another alternative for these people because they would be suffering a painful death. For those who just want it because they had a bad day and don’t want to go on living. I think that these people have other options such as therapy and counseling.
Throughout chapter 9, we took a look at several different views on the ever-controversial issue of suicide. For myself, my stance is quite black and white on the issue of suicide. I do believe it is sinful just as Plato, Augustine, and Aquinas suggest. It is clearly against the commandment, “Thou shalt not murder,” as it is the murder of oneself. Not in any way do I believe that we should legalize physician-assisted suicide, as such a law would communicate the acceptance of an immoral decision. As mentioned in class, if someone is determined to commit suicide, they will find the time and place to do so (just like my friend who committed the act the instant she was left alone) despite laws against it, however, I feel that it is necessary to set this symbolic standard to communicate that such action is unacceptable.
In most cases, I understand that suicide is not a fully sound decision (mental illness, crimes of passion, etc.) However, physician-assisted suicide is typically a grounded decision. Though it may seem like the easiest solution for the incurably ill, I feel that there are better alternatives. I feel that it is the role of physicians to aid the ill and make their death as painless as possible through hospice, medications, etc. Allowing one to die peacefully in the case of an incurable disease, I believe is acceptable as “God sends some necessary circumstance” as Plato suggests (162), revealing that it is that person’s “time to die” so to say, but I never think it is acceptable to assist the suicide of and essentially kill someone who has not yet reached this “circumstance.”
Contrary to what Karlie says, I think it is important to remember we live in a country where law making is free of religious influence; therefore, the ten commandments are not grounds to make Dr. assisted suicide illegal. One of the scariest things about death is that we never know when it is going to occur. For a lot of depressed and terminally ill patients who feel like they have lost control of their lives can use suicide to end life under their terms. I understand their must be measures taken to alleviate Dr.s of the liabilities associated with aiding a patients request to be killed, but if it can be showed that the individual understand their decision we should not be able to stop them from making that choice.
Before this class I had always thought sucicide was wrong. Period. THinking about the terminally ill puts a new perspective on it. If someone is terminally ill and in imense pain and has accepted death, then who are we to say they must stay alive? PAS sounds morbid and immoral at first, but when you look at all of the regulations and rules that must be followed it might not be a completely bad thing for some people. With that said, I would never ask to have a PAS even if I was in pain due to my beliefs, but not everyone has my beliefs. Just because the law is there does not mean we have to agree with it, but just as we want others to respect our views and beliefs we must respect theirs, too.
I dont think PAS is necessarily wrong, but I believe that regulations would have to be put in place to prevent abuse of the act. A person would have to be in the right mind to make that decision, and doctors would have to be trained to be able to administer the PAS and be okay mentally with it. It is only acceptable for terminally ill to do this though and would not be acceptable for depressed people to use this to simply quit living.
Karlie could not have said it any better in my opinion! I do not, under any circumstance, believe that physician assisted suicide is acceptable. Suicide, in general, is most often a choice made out of haste. Once a person has committed themselves to suicide, it is bound to happen, its just a matter of when. However, physician assisted suicide is, in my opinion, closer to something like murder than to suicide. While there are several regulations that bind physician assisted suicide, it is still a decision that is made in sound mind by the physician to go through with the action. To each his own, but my thinking is that PAS is morally and ethically wrong. Life begins at conception and should not end except for natural causes. Neither suiced nor physician assisted suicide are natural causes. These physicians should be aiding the patients in their last moments of life, providing end of life care, medication (morphine, etc.), instead of aiding in their death, essentially causing their death before nature runs its course.
PAS was one of the most interesting topics we got to talk about this semester. PAS is full of different facts and opinions shared by others. Before discussing this deeply in class I always thought PAS was wrong in so many ways. I always thought you should strive to live no matter the circumstances, but after hearing others thoughts and opinions I am now neutral about the situation. As wrong as I think killing someone is, it's also wrong keeping someone alive who is suffering so bad it's just not worth living anymore. Not saying to kill someone who can be healed, but for someone who is dying and in a great amount of pain, its hard for me to watch them suffer. PAS is an ongoing topic that is talked about a lot now-a-days. We may never find the right answer to this question, but we should always respect others thoughts and feelings about the topic.
I feel that killing and allowing to die are two completely different things. If someone is suffering through an immense amount of pain, I can choose to kill them then and they will no longer suffer. If I "let them die" by taking them off medication they will just suffer more. If someone has a terminal illness, they should be able to choose that they are ready to die. Many people do not look at the whole picture and all the facts of PAS, which we did in class. In order for a person to be able to have an educated opinion on the subject they must be able to determine the difference between "killing" and "allowing to die".
I believe that there is a big difference between killing and allowing to die. Taking somebody off of life support is not actively killing them. They die of a natural cause, rather than an unnatural one, like euthanasia. Maybe it seems like splitting hairs, but that is my opinion. I also do not agree with PAS. To me, suicide is suicide, no matter what. Nobody has a right to kill themselves, in my opinion. I don't really see the difference between somebody who is old and dying who is in a lot of pain, and somebody who is my age and depressed and wants to die. Either way, you are not dead yet, and it is God's decision of when you should die, not your own. On the other hand, I think sacrificial death is something to be admired. Giving your life to save somebody else is incredibly charitable and unselfish, and if those are your motives, then I don't see anything wrong with throwing yourself on a grenade to save somebody else.
I apologize for the delay in putting this on the blog. Some additional questions we had prepared for class, but did not have time to discuss include:
ReplyDelete1. Is your view or euthanasia that of a narrow or broad interpretation? Do you believe that there is a difference between “killing” and “allowing to die”? Why or why not?
2. Do you find a type of euthanasia, active or passive, more acceptable than the other? Why or why not?
3. What is your stance on self-sacrificial and coerced deaths? Are they suicides?
4. Is there any preferable alternative to euthanasia?
I set out to answer these questions last night and I ended taking a very long detour and questioning my own existing beliefs on this issue.
ReplyDeleteI believe that everyone absolutely has the right to end their own life, provided they are competent to make this decision. The difficult aspect of this is if a doctor can legally assist and what role they are able to play. I think that it is perhaps a positive thing for euthanasia to be illegal in most states. It is such a delicate issue that their truly is no room for error or lapses in judgment. Even with euthanasia being illegal in most states, it is not taking away an individuals right to make the decision; it is making it harder for them to make a potentially wrong and irreversible decision.
Its hard to fully wrap your head around such a complex issue as this because we can't fully understand what it would be like in a position like this unless we were actually there. A person deserves to have help to ensure that the process can be as dignified as possible. This isn't something that just any doctor should be able to do (nor would everyone want to)as it goes against their typical duty of saving or curing someone.
I do not know what I can concretely say about my opinions of euthanasia other than everyone deserves the right to make this decision. Most all other aspects are unique to each person and their own beliefs and wishes. There is something incredibly difficult with watching someone straddle the very delicate line between life and death and removing their last leg across the line for the final time.
I personally believe that there is a difference between “killing” and “allowing to die.” Killing is active, whereas allowing one to die is passive. One who kills is putting direct effort toward reversing the vitality of one’s life; on the flipside, one who allows someone to die is refusing to perform actions that he or she knows are needed in order to sustain life. While these two mediums are altogether different, the purpose each achieves is one in the same: death. So, the difference involves the means, not the end.
ReplyDeleteI don’t believe that either active or passive euthanasia is acceptable. Why is it any other human’s place to decide when one’s time to die has come? What we perceive may be pain and suffering may not be a prompt to kill someone. If either passive or active euthanasia was acceptable, the case would be plain and simple: a human would be saying that it is indeed okay to oversee the death of someone else. Euthanasia is one of the most controversial topics in the Catholic Church.
Per the literal definition of suicide as “to kill one’s self,” self-sacrificial and coerced deaths are suicides. Such a distinction entails the means vs. ends question once again. The ends, in this case, is suicide, and the means are the various methods by which one’s life ends. While most people generally consider suicide as an intentional end to one’s life because of social reasons, suicide has other causes as well.
There is no preferable alternative to euthanasia. Something that continuously presents itself in my head during talk about euthanasia is hospice, but under rational thought, these are not two like entities. Hospice provides comfort to the irreversibly sick by eliminating suffering, while euthanasia disregards the question of terminality and ends one’s life based on others’ demands. Each of these topics is controversial, so I’m sure opinions would vary.
After thinking on this topic for more than an hour I concluded that I fall closer to the narrow interpretation of euthanasia. I think that killing and allowing to die are two separate things. Killing someone generally speaking killing someone usually involves the active ending or direct end to a life. Allowing someone to die is more of an indirect way as an end of one’s life. With self sacrificial and coerced deaths I would not consider them suicides because they are not directly taking their lives. When someone’s freedom is limited I think that the question of is it suicide is harder to answer.
ReplyDeleteI think for myself the large moral problem that arises when I think about Euthanasia is whether we have the right to end another human’s life even if they give consent to do so. The problem for me lies in the question of autonomy or free will we have as human beings. Like Ben said I think the problem of using people as a means to an end rather than people as an end in themselves. While I think that currently euthanasia is moral problem for myself, I would say that having a trained professional end a life would be better than having someone like a family member or person who is untrained in the matter ending their life because doctors have set procedures and plans in place to make it less problematic.
As I stated in class I think that physician assisted suicide is an acceptable result for someone suffering from a degenerative disease such as Huntington’s. In cases like that I don’t really think that there is another alternative for these people because they would be suffering a painful death. For those who just want it because they had a bad day and don’t want to go on living. I think that these people have other options such as therapy and counseling.
ReplyDeleteThroughout chapter 9, we took a look at several different views on the ever-controversial issue of suicide. For myself, my stance is quite black and white on the issue of suicide. I do believe it is sinful just as Plato, Augustine, and Aquinas suggest. It is clearly against the commandment, “Thou shalt not murder,” as it is the murder of oneself. Not in any way do I believe that we should legalize physician-assisted suicide, as such a law would communicate the acceptance of an immoral decision. As mentioned in class, if someone is determined to commit suicide, they will find the time and place to do so (just like my friend who committed the act the instant she was left alone) despite laws against it, however, I feel that it is necessary to set this symbolic standard to communicate that such action is unacceptable.
ReplyDeleteIn most cases, I understand that suicide is not a fully sound decision (mental illness, crimes of passion, etc.) However, physician-assisted suicide is typically a grounded decision. Though it may seem like the easiest solution for the incurably ill, I feel that there are better alternatives. I feel that it is the role of physicians to aid the ill and make their death as painless as possible through hospice, medications, etc. Allowing one to die peacefully in the case of an incurable disease, I believe is acceptable as “God sends some necessary circumstance” as Plato suggests (162), revealing that it is that person’s “time to die” so to say, but I never think it is acceptable to assist the suicide of and essentially kill someone who has not yet reached this “circumstance.”
Contrary to what Karlie says, I think it is important to remember we live in a country where law making is free of religious influence; therefore, the ten commandments are not grounds to make Dr. assisted suicide illegal. One of the scariest things about death is that we never know when it is going to occur. For a lot of depressed and terminally ill patients who feel like they have lost control of their lives can use suicide to end life under their terms. I understand their must be measures taken to alleviate Dr.s of the liabilities associated with aiding a patients request to be killed, but if it can be showed that the individual understand their decision we should not be able to stop them from making that choice.
ReplyDeleteBefore this class I had always thought sucicide was wrong. Period. THinking about the terminally ill puts a new perspective on it. If someone is terminally ill and in imense pain and has accepted death, then who are we to say they must stay alive? PAS sounds morbid and immoral at first, but when you look at all of the regulations and rules that must be followed it might not be a completely bad thing for some people. With that said, I would never ask to have a PAS even if I was in pain due to my beliefs, but not everyone has my beliefs. Just because the law is there does not mean we have to agree with it, but just as we want others to respect our views and beliefs we must respect theirs, too.
ReplyDeleteI dont think PAS is necessarily wrong, but I believe that regulations would have to be put in place to prevent abuse of the act. A person would have to be in the right mind to make that decision, and doctors would have to be trained to be able to administer the PAS and be okay mentally with it. It is only acceptable for terminally ill to do this though and would not be acceptable for depressed people to use this to simply quit living.
ReplyDeleteKarlie could not have said it any better in my opinion! I do not, under any circumstance, believe that physician assisted suicide is acceptable. Suicide, in general, is most often a choice made out of haste. Once a person has committed themselves to suicide, it is bound to happen, its just a matter of when. However, physician assisted suicide is, in my opinion, closer to something like murder than to suicide. While there are several regulations that bind physician assisted suicide, it is still a decision that is made in sound mind by the physician to go through with the action. To each his own, but my thinking is that PAS is morally and ethically wrong. Life begins at conception and should not end except for natural causes. Neither suiced nor physician assisted suicide are natural causes. These physicians should be aiding the patients in their last moments of life, providing end of life care, medication (morphine, etc.), instead of aiding in their death, essentially causing their death before nature runs its course.
ReplyDeletePAS was one of the most interesting topics we got to talk about this semester. PAS is full of different facts and opinions shared by others. Before discussing this deeply in class I always thought PAS was wrong in so many ways. I always thought you should strive to live no matter the circumstances, but after hearing others thoughts and opinions I am now neutral about the situation. As wrong as I think killing someone is, it's also wrong keeping someone alive who is suffering so bad it's just not worth living anymore. Not saying to kill someone who can be healed, but for someone who is dying and in a great amount of pain, its hard for me to watch them suffer. PAS is an ongoing topic that is talked about a lot now-a-days. We may never find the right answer to this question, but we should always respect others thoughts and feelings about the topic.
ReplyDeleteI feel that killing and allowing to die are two completely different things. If someone is suffering through an immense amount of pain, I can choose to kill them then and they will no longer suffer. If I "let them die" by taking them off medication they will just suffer more. If someone has a terminal illness, they should be able to choose that they are ready to die. Many people do not look at the whole picture and all the facts of PAS, which we did in class. In order for a person to be able to have an educated opinion on the subject they must be able to determine the difference between "killing" and "allowing to die".
ReplyDeleteI believe that there is a big difference between killing and allowing to die. Taking somebody off of life support is not actively killing them. They die of a natural cause, rather than an unnatural one, like euthanasia. Maybe it seems like splitting hairs, but that is my opinion. I also do not agree with PAS. To me, suicide is suicide, no matter what. Nobody has a right to kill themselves, in my opinion. I don't really see the difference between somebody who is old and dying who is in a lot of pain, and somebody who is my age and depressed and wants to die. Either way, you are not dead yet, and it is God's decision of when you should die, not your own. On the other hand, I think sacrificial death is something to be admired. Giving your life to save somebody else is incredibly charitable and unselfish, and if those are your motives, then I don't see anything wrong with throwing yourself on a grenade to save somebody else.
ReplyDelete