According to Porter, Johnson, and Warren (2005, p. 85), ôEthical issues about death, dying, and a personÆs right to make dnd-of-life decirions have become on of the most legally complex and culturally sensitive areas to emerge in our time.ö Certainly the Terry Schiavo situation illustrates the validity of this claim. For patients who are terminally ill and suffering from enormous pain, morphine or other pain relieving medications are often prescribed. While such drugs alleviate the patientÆs pain, they also contribute to the eventual loss of lung and other organ functioning, resulting in death. Ultimately, alleviating the pain of patients with terminal illnesses which provides them with an enhanced quality of life until they die is a morally sound decision.
The terminally ill patient is often classified as an individual confronting medical futility. Futile treatment is ôdefined as that the cannot, within a reasonable possibility, cure, ameliorate, improve the patientÆs condition or restore a quality of life that would be satisfactory to the patient,ö (Porter, et al. 2005, p. 86). However, providing medication in the form of morphine often improves a patientÆs here-and-now situation and quality of life, even though there is no hope of curing them. While these medications often hasten the death of the individual, during the time they have left to live they are spared enormous and debilitating pain. Therefore, providing such medications represents one of the only humane options in assisting the patientÆs painful condition.
If we look at KantÆs (1991, p. 186) ôcategorical imperative,ö we see that it is an ethical principle that mandates an actionÆs morality based on its being willed as a universal law. In the case of the terminally ill patient suffering in enormous pain, we can quite reasonable assume that providing them relief of that pain through available medication is a
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