Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
nonmaleficence, provide no guidance. Without this decision, it cannot be determined
whether termination of life support is a benefit or harm to the patient.
For many individuals, the fight for life is a correct professional view. They believe that
the forces of medicine should always be committed to using innovative ways of prolonging
life for the individual. However, this cannot be the only approach to caring for the termi-
nally ill. Certain moral questions regarding the extent to which physicians engaged in
heroic efforts to prolong life must be addressed if the individual's rights are to be pre-
served. The goal of those responsible for patient care should not solely be to prolong life
as long as possible by the extensive use of drugs, operations, respirators, hemodialyzers,
pacemakers, and the like, but rather to provide a reasonable “quality of life” for each
patient. It is out of this new concern that euthanasia has once again become a controversial
issue in the practice of medicine.
The term
is derived from two Greek words meaning “good” and “death.”
Euthanasia was practiced in many primitive societies in varying degrees. For example, on
the island of Cos, the ancient Greeks assembled elderly and sick people at an annual ban-
quet to consume a poisonous potion. Even Aristotle advocated euthanasia for gravely
deformed children. Other cultures acted in a similar manner toward their aged by abandon-
ing them when they felt these individuals no longer served any useful purpose. However,
with the spread of Christianity in the Western world, a new attitude developed toward
euthanasia. Because of the Judeo-Christian belief in the biblical statements “Thou shalt
not kill” (Exodus 20: 13) and “He who kills a man should be put to death” (Leviticus
24: 17), the practice of euthanasia decreased. As a result of these moral judgments, killing
was considered a sin, and the decision about whether someone should live or die was
viewed solely as God's responsibility, not humans'.
In today's society, euthanasia implies to many “death with dignity,” a practice to be
followed when life is merely being prolonged by machines and no longer seems to have
value. In many instances, it has come to mean a contract for the termination of life in order
to avoid unnecessary suffering at the end of a fatal illness and, therefore, has the connota-
tion of relief from pain.
Discussions of the morality of euthanasia often distinguish active from passive euthana-
sia, a distinction that rests upon the difference between an act of commission and an act
of omission. When failure to take steps that could effectively forestall death results in an
individual's demise, the resultant death is an act of omission and a case of letting a person
die. When a death is the result of doing something to hasten the end of a person's life (for
example, giving a lethal injection), that death is caused by an act of commission and is a case of
killing a person. The important difference between active and passive euthanasia is that in pas-
sive euthanasia, the physician does not do anything to bring about the patient's death. The
physician does nothing, and death results due to whatever illness already afflicts the patient.
In active euthanasia, however, the physician does something to bring about the patient's death.
The physician who gives the patient with cancer a lethal injection has caused the patient's
death, whereas if the physician merely ceases treatment, the cancer is the cause of death.
In active euthanasia, someone must do something to bring about the patient's death, and
in passive euthanasia, the patient's death is caused by illness rather than by anyone's con-
duct. Is this notion correct? Suppose a physician deliberately decides not to treat a patient
who is terminally ill, and the patient dies. Suppose further that the physician were to
attempt to exonerate himself by saying, “I did nothing. The patient's death was the result
euthanasia
