Euthanasia Flashcards
Palliative care
Care and pain relief for people at the end of their lives.
Hippocratic oath
The oath doctors take which says they will do everything they can to SAVE life.
Human rights
The rights and freedoms which we all have. The right to your own body can be used to support euthanasia. My body, my choice.
Quality of life
the belief that life is meaningful only if we can achieve or have certain capacities e.g. self-awareness.
Sanctity of life
the belief that life is sacred/holy and belongs to God. God is the only being with the power over life and death.
Euthanasia
involves the doctor administering a lethal dosage at the patient’s request.
Assisted society
is where the patient is given the means to kill himself/herself normally by a doctor.
Voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide
-There is some overlap in meaning between these words.
-Generally there is a suggestion that Euthanasia involves the doctor administering a lethal dosage at the patient’s request.
-Assisted suicide is where the patient is given the means (usually by a doctor) to kill himself/herself normally in the form of a drink (barbiturates).
-You do not need to know about involuntary or non-voluntary euthanasia.
-Both are illegal in the UK.
-From 2002 euthanasia and physician assisted suicide became legal in Holland.
What is voluntary euthanasia?
-Euthanasia comes from two Greek words meaning ‘good death’. To euthanise someone therefore means to induce a gentle and easy death in order to end suffering.
-The request can come because pain is unbearable and the condition causing it is terminal (or at least life threatening), and the patient refuses to continue with intrusive medical treatment that can be as unbearable as the suffering caused by the condition itself.
-Euthanasia is therefore a deliberate termination/shortening of life, usually by a doctor.
-Voluntary euthanasia is where someone who is mentally stable / in their right mind requests his / her own death.
The person concerned usually is unable to die without help (from a doctor / physician)
What is assisted suicide?
-The person concerned is usually given the means / medicine to kill himself / herself, and the patient asks for the medicine.
-The medicine is usually a lethal drug administered in the form of a drink provided by a doctor, although it could also be a close relative.
-Generally mental competency of the patient has to be ascertained.
Sometimes the condition may not be life threatening.
Sanctity vs quality
Sanctity of life : the idea that life is intrinsically sacred or has such worth that it is not considered within the power of a human being.
Quality of life : a way of weighing the extrinsic experience of life, that affects or justifies whether or not it is worth continuing life.
Personhood - peter singer
-Some people would justify euthanasia on the idea of personhood.
-Peter Singer would distinguish between humans and persons.
-Human means you belong to the species homosapien.
-To be a person means to have certain qualities of personhood e.g. self awareness, ideas for your future, ideas about your past, emotionality
-So a person who suffers brain trauma may be considered human but not a person.
-To this end euthanasia and assisted suicide could be permitted
Tony Nicklinson
-Tony Nicklinson, a man with locked-in syndrome who fought for the right to legally end his life, has died.
-lost his High Court case to allow doctors to end his life. Mr Nicklinson’s family solicitor said that he had refused food from last week.
-catastrophic stroke it left his body almost completely paralysed; however, his intellect was undimmed.
Noel Conway
-Noel Conway is in the final stages of the disease and faces losing his mobility. He says he wants to be in control of his own death.
-terminally ill has launched a legal challenge for the right to die, claiming that the 1961 Suicide Act condemns him to an undignified and terrifying death.
-If I let nature take its course, I could effectively become entombed in my own body as my ability to move
