Euthanasia Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Euthanasia (“good death,” from the Greek eu, meaning “good” and thanatos, meaning “death”) refers to any medical act with an intended consequence of inducing the death of the patient (usually a terminally ill patient) in a painless manner. Euthanasia is a hotly debated topic in the field of medical ethics. Some doctors argue that the primary duty of medical doctors is to preserve human life under all circumstances. Indeed, the traditional Hippocratic oath (dating in its original form from the fourth century BCE) claims that medical doctors should never “prescribe a deadly drug.” Especially in the twentieth century, however, various authors and legal and moral authorities have claimed that medical doctors have a moral and legal right to prevent their patients’ suffering by helping them to die in a dignified and painless manner.

Definition And Conflict

In practice, euthanasia refers to a whole range of medical acts that are often not clearly distinguished from one another, ranging from not prolonging a life-sustaining (but also not curative) treatment to providing prolonged and possibly lethal sedation to dying patients to administering an active life-terminating treatment. It should be noted that euthanasia typically refers to the life-ending act among chronically or terminally ill patients. Although during the Nazi era in Germany (1933–1945), the indiscriminate killing of mentally ill patients was labeled “euthanasia,” this in no way falls under the current definition of the practice.

In various countries, laws and policy measures on euthanasia are a salient political issue. While liberal and progressive parties and groups normally are in favor of allowing euthanasia, the reverse is the case for conservative political parties. The topic of euthanasia is salient because it raises fundamental bioethical questions among the population, in the same manner as abortion or gay marriage tend to do. Often, the laws on euthanasia rise high on the political agenda because of the media focus on specific cases in which terminally ill and suffering patients were denied a physician-assisted death. In various countries, finding a compromise on the legal status of euthanasia has proved to be quite difficult.

Euthanasia In Europe

The Netherlands was the first Western country to legalize euthanasia in a law of April 2001, which took effect on April 1, 2002. The 2001 law proclaims that every patient has an inalienable right to determine the manner and conditions in which he or she wants to end life. The law installs a specific procedure to allow patients to request euthanasia if they are in a state of “incurable and unbearable suffering.” Healthy persons, too, can file formal statements indicating that they opt for euthanasia if, at some point in the future, they end up in such a position and are no longer able to express themselves. Medical doctors in the Netherlands who perform euthanasia will not be prosecuted if they follow a specific procedure. The doctor must be certain there is no standard medical solution for the suffering and that the patient has made the decision in a voluntary manner; the doctor must also have provided the patient with all necessary and relevant information and consulted another medical doctor before actually performing the act of euthanasia. Since 2002, the law has been implemented without any major incidents. There is some political discussion, however, about whether the law should be broadened to apply to patients who are not yet sixteen years old or to patients who are suffering mentally but not physically.

Neighboring Belgium followed suit in September 2002. Belgium basically copies the Dutch law, but the country installed an administrative procedure to report all cases of euthanasia to a central authority. In Belgian politics, euthanasia for minors remains a hotly debated question; there have also been some political debates about whether Catholic hospitals (which are the only hospitals available in some regions) should provide this service.

Euthanasia In The United States

In a number of other industrialized countries political debates about euthanasia laws are under way, without having led to a specific change in the law. In France, the debate was revived in early 2008 by the case of a cancer patient with a large and very painful face tumor who requested permission for a physician-assisted death from the highest court in France. Shortly after the request was turned down, the patient committed suicide.

In the United States, too, some highly publicized clinical cases led to intense political debate. In 1976 the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that coma patient Karen Ann Quinlan could be taken off an artificial breathing machine. During the 1990s, the highly publicized trials against Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian (1928–) led to intense debate, eventually leading to the conviction of Dr. Kevorkian on murder charges. In 2005, controversy erupted over the case of Terri Schiavo, who had lived in a coma for fifteen years. Despite attempts from President George W. Bush to stop a legal decision, Florida courts eventually gave permission to end the life-sustaining treatment of the patient.

In 1990 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (in Cruzan v. Director of Missouri Department of Health) that there is no obligation to maintain life-sustaining treatment for terminally ill patients. There is no legal ground, however, for an active form of euthanasia that would actually shorten the life of the patient. In 1994, the state of Oregon passed a law allowing medical doctors to prescribe, but not administer themselves, lethal drugs to terminally ill patients. The Death with Dignity Act (in effect as of October 27, 1997) mandates that patients administer the lethal drugs themselves. Various attempts by the Bush administration to stop the implementation of the act failed, and in 2006 the act was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Gonzales v. Oregon. According to official Oregon figures, in the period from 1997 to 2008 some four hundred patients have used the Death with Dignity Act to die in a painless manner. In November 2008, voters in the state of Washington approved the introduction of a similar act in their state.

It can be expected that the 2006 U.S. Supreme Court decision will lead to debate about euthanasia in other states. Euthanasia will remain a contentious issue, with sharp cleavages among the population, mostly according to liberal/ conservative or religious dividing lines.

Bibliography:

Dworkin, Ronald. Life’s Dominion: An Argument about Abortion, Euthanasia, and Individual Freedom. New York: Knopf, 1993.
Green-Pedersen, Christoffer. “The Conflict of Conflicts in Comparative Perspective. Euthanasia as a Political Issue in Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands.” Comparative Politics 39, no. 3 (2007): 273–292.
Griffiths, John, Heleen Weyers, and Maurice Adams. Euthanasia and the Law in Europe. Portland, Ore.: Hart, 2008.
Hillyard, Daniel. Dying Right: The Death with Dignity Movement. London: Routledge, 2001.
Lewis, Penney. Assisted Dying and Legal Change. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.