B. Patient as the most important decision maker
A. Reasons doctors oppose the practice
C. Doctors should assist patients in the decision
A. Family responsibility if patient is incompetent
B. Patient's decision overrides family wishes
A. Catholic and Protestant perspectives
B. Distinction between passive and active euthanasia
A. Doctor, patient and family should work together
B. Passive euthanasia should be decriminalized
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issue of euthanasia. This practice will be considered from the perspective of the patient, doctor, family, attorney and church. Euthanasia can be defined as either having or producing "a quiet and easy death" (Kluge 11). There are two basic types of euthanasia. Passive euthanasia refers simply to "allowing the patient to die in comfort" whereas active euthanasia involves "taking active measures to end life" (Kluge 11). People in modern societies tend to object more strongly to the idea of active euthanasia than they do to passive euthanasia. This is because the difference between the two practices marks the "difference between killing people, on the one hand, and merely letting people die, on the other" (Rachels 107). Nevertheless, both forms of euthanasia have been the subject of great controversy in recent years.
Some of this controversy has been concerned with the question of patient's rights. The point of the view of the patient is concerned with personal dignity and the rights of the individual in a free society. During the period of the civil rights movements of the 1960s, concerns were raised regarding health care just as they were for other factors of society. At that time, "critics claimed that patients had the right to make their own decisions about treatment and hospitalizations, and should not be made to submit blindly to the preferences of physicians, no matter how well intentioned the doctors were" (Win...