Euthanasia

Introduction

An important dimension of euthanasia is the matter of who makes the decision concerning the termination of the life of an individual. Most writers divide euthanasia into voluntary euthanasia, where a competent individual requests, and gives informed consent, to withhold treatment, and informal euthanasia, where the decision to terminate an individual's life is made by others. One set of writers, however, suggests that there are three variations of decision-making in euthanasia. They also articulate the definitions of the variations somewhat differently (Arras, 66).

As they conceptualize the paradigm, voluntary euthanasia refers to the instance of an individual asking for and/or assenting to their death. Where the individual is unable to make such a decision (such as a person who is unconscious or in a coma, or, perhaps, an infant) and “a second person somehow intentionally contributes to the death of this sort of person, it is non-voluntary euthanasia.” They further assert that where a person wishes to be kept alive but someone else chooses to terminate the individual's life, the process should be correctly labeled involuntary euthanasia (more like homicide than like a “good death”) (Campbell, 189).

The Argument From The Evil Of Suffering As A Utilitarian Argument

The key claim of the Argument from the Evil of Suffering is the following: since one of the crucial goals of medicine is to relieve suffering of the competent patient who requests it, pain or suffering that does not lead to a greater good in the eyes of the patient, serves no point, and therefore must be eliminated experts have thus phrased this argument as a consequentialist or utilitarian one. The idea is that, on balance, the negative consequences of continued living with severe pain or suffering in the last stages of one's life outweigh any alternative or benefit. Proponents of EPAS will often frame the Argument from the Evil of Suffering in terms of the suffering of the patient alone (Foley, 144). This preserves the illusion of consistency with the patient-centered approach to the practice of medicine. Experts believe, however, that other factors apart from the patient's suffering alone play a role. The perception, for example, of the terminally ill that their suffering is a burden to family or health care staff—empirically well demonstrated—indicates that negative consequences of continued care are felt by others as well (Wilson, Curran, and McPherson, 2005). These “negative consequences” are then transmitted back to the patient herself to be utilized in the decision-making process.

The question arises, then, whether the “power” of the Argument from the Evil of Suffering is wholly contained in, and limited to, the terminally ill person alone. For the dying person at the bedside, the suffering is obvious. But is it also not true that the family watching the person also suffers, as do the health care providers? At least one recent study has shown that both physicians in the United States would provide euthanasia (7% and 14%, respectively) or PAS (22% and 18%, respectively) for patients who saw their lives as “meaningless”; for patients ...