Euthanasia
Euthanasia is a practice of killing (or helping to die – different people have different definitions of euthanasia) without pain a person who is suffering from a disease which cannot be cured or from extreme old age. The problem of euthanasia raises a great deal of controversy. It has many supporters and many opponents especially orthodox Christians and as usual there is a lot of people who don’t want to say exactly if they support euthanasia or think that it should be prohibited. I think we should know all arguments speaking for euthanasia and against it – there is a lot of aspects of that problem.
The most important thing, saying that euthanasia should be legal, in my opinion, is that each of us, each human being should have a right to decide about his life. Euthanasia is some kind of suicide. Each of us have right to commit suicide (now I don’t take into account any religion – just natural law – freewill) but extremely old and ill people are not able to commit suicide. So there is a question if the doctors should help them. And it becomes to be very complicated here.
1. I don’t think that terminally ill people can take into account all aspects of their decision. I don’t think that they think effectively. Incredible illnesses such as AIDS or cancers are connected with pain and suffering. Such patients can be shocked. So they can’t make a good and responsible decision. And it very important to emphasize that it’s very important decision.
2. Doctors are only human beings and they can make a mistake. For e.g. they can tell someone that he have a cancer, because it looked as if it was a cancer. And after a while it can it turned out that he’s not terminally ill. (Of course such examples are would be very rare, but I want to take into account everything).
3. Scientists look for new cures all the time. So theoretically patient can have hope that their will find out how to cure him effectively.
So it’s quite difficult is euthanasia bad or wrong. But one is sure, euthanasia needs very good law background.
Moral aspect of euthanasia is very important. Euthanasia brings difficult choices for many people: ill person, which have to decide if she wants to live or die; it’s difficult situation for relatives – they can encourage ill person and persuade to fight with disease as long as it’s possible, but on the other hand such fighting is connected with suffering so there is question is it worth ? And at last euthanasia makes difficult choices for doctors. They face a conflict between the duty to sustain life and the obligation to relieve suffering – which is better? – I wouldn’t like to be in such situation.
Nowadays euthanasia is legal in Holland. Is it good or bad? To tell the truth I don’t know and I won’t answer that question. We have to take into account that Holland is rich country, which spend a lot of money for health service so they can help a lot of people which are ill (e.g. in Poland there are queues for specialist operations – in poor countries many people die because in the hospitals there’s no place for them) so If I were ill and I were able to choose I would like to be ill Holland. Very important thing is law. Many opponents of euthanasia don’t speak about it. But they should notice that it is not so easy to be killed in Holland. Doctors have 28 – point list and according to it they check if the patient is really terminally ill and there is no hope for him. Ill person have to sing a paper saying that he really wants it. The doctors accept about one quarter of requests of euthanasia so as we can see it’s not so easy to get help with dieing.
Summing it up. Euthanasia is difficult problem and it wouldn’t be solved soon. I can see strong arguments saying that euthanasia should be legal, but on the other hand, taking into account moral aspects and religion …
Helaa