Issue of Death and Euthanasia

Medicine, relative world peace and an improved standard of living environments have given us the opportunity to live longer than our forefathers. The lifespan of the average person in Western society is double that of two hundred years ago; a seven decade anticipation, barring accident, war and "acts of God" (the "force majeure" caveat clause in all modern contracts). That improvement in the quality of life should make us happy. It does not. No longer do we fear the sudden breeze-chill-death of pneumonia that killed millions more people in 1919 than the Great War had in the preceding four years. Now science has given us the ability to linger, fading slowly, dying in tiny, dehumanizing steps. We are discomfited by our mortality in general; we are terrified by the way we die in specific.

The cruel irony: where once the weak and infirm had little hope of surviving more than a short while, modern doctors extend days into weeks, weeks into months, months, sometimes, into years - fulfilling their vocation unde

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lug" on the accident victim would be formally a non-voluntary, passive euthanasia. In the latter (b) case, we have the situation of the earlier-mentioned severely deformed baby: there is no way that an infant can make life/death decisions - the act of withholding extraordinary life support systems becomes a personal decision for doctors, family and the society at large - the receptor is not able to be a participant in the decision. It is easy to imagine the ethical, moral and practical quandaries embraced by this scenario: choosing priorities easily becomes a social, rather than individual, factor in the equation (American Friends Service Committee, 1970, pp. 73-81). Is the schizophrenic patient pounding her head against a wall six out of seven days a week a candidate for euthanasia? Aren't her mental pains and physical restraints justification enough for a "merciful" ending to her plight? The "Elephant Man," to take an historical example, spent his life as a sideshow freak, then a medical lab specimen - in pain often, eventually dying from the medical complications of his from-birth condition - someone who would have been a prime beneficiary of one hope science has to offer from his plight: a swift, painless release. B
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Approximate Word count = 3025
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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