Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
euthanasia	hotpotato	03/09/05
HI expert! i was wondering if you could give me some ideas for the following question for a discussion? How should our society react to acts of euthanasia. Do you agree or disagree? Do you think it's unjust or just. For those who are sentenced due to acts of euthanasia. For example I Was reading the Robert Latimer Case. Do you think the sentence is too severe or too light. Can you give me some opinion and ideas about the issue on euthanasia?
Answered By		Answered On
captainoutrageous		03/09/05
Euthanasia is a controversial practice. Some people believe patients should have an unqualified right to die. Other people consider all forms of euthanasia to be murder or suicide and thus immoral. Still others approve of some forms of euthanasia and disapprove of others. Very few countries have laws specifically allowing euthanasia. Some countries tolerate mercy killing without actually legalizing it. Many people oppose active euthanasia, such as the injection of a lethal drug, because it requires one person to deliberately kill another. Fewer people oppose passive euthanasia-the withdrawal of life-sustaining medical treatment-for patients who request it. Belgium and the Netherlands are the only countries that have legalized active euthanasia, and in those countries the practice is legal only under certain conditions. In 1990, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that patients have a right to passive euthanasia if they have clearly made their wishes known. People can express their wishes in documents called living wills and by granting durable powers of attorney. In living wills, people state what kind of care they would prefer if, due to injury or disease, they could not express their wishes. In the granting of durable powers of attorney, individuals name one or more persons whom they wish to make decisions about their medical care if they should lose the ability to communicate such decisions themselves. Self-induced euthanasia occurs when people end their own lives painlessly. In some cases, physicians provide lethal drugs that their patients then take to kill themselves. This type of euthanasia iscalled physician-assisted suicide or doctor-assisted suicide. Few countries have had laws permitting the practice. In the United States in the 1990's, Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan doctor, focused national attention on physician-assisted suicide by helping gravely ill people kill themselves. In 1999, a Michigan jury convicted him of murder in a case in which he performed active euthanasia. Many states have laws against physician-assisted suicide. But a law that specifically permits it went into effect in Oregon in 1997. Oregon is the only state that has such a law. In 2001, the Netherlands officially legalized self-induced euthanasia-as well as active and passive euthanasia-under certain conditions. Several other countries have tolerated some forms of mercy killing but have not officially legalized the practice. Many people support the concept of physician-assisted suicide. Many of those who oppose the practice argue that doctors should not help people kill themselves, because their job is to preserve life. Latimer says that he killed his daughter because she had ongoing health problems and he believed that the next surgery she was to have, to ease a permanently disconnected hip, would only add to her suffering. He is seeking a reduction of his sentence (having served 3 years as of 2004). Supporters of Latimer said that this was a mercy killing which should not be punished as harshly as other murders. (10 years is the minimum sentence for murder). The jury that convicted him felt that he should spend 1 year in jail and another under house arrest at his farm near Wilkie, Saskatchewan. However, disability rights advocates said that killing a severely disabled child like Tracy should carry the same penalty as killing a non-disabled child. To do otherwise would devalue the lives of disabled people and increase the risk of more "mercy killings" by their caregivers. Robert Latimer is currently serving his sentence in a minimum-security facility on Vancouver Island. wikipedia.org http://www.techcentralstation.net/080503A.html http://sun.menloschool.org/~sportman/ethics/project/topics/euthanasia/con.html http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Valley/5881/euthanasia.html

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