Euthanasia as Morally Permissible

Perhaps because of the high media profile of one Jack Kevorkian of Michigan, a compelling need to understand these aspects has emerged in recent years. However, the issue of euthanasia is neither new nor simple. Indeed, one difficulty with discussing euthanasia from a moral standpoint alone is that moral debate overlaps into law, medicine, and public policy. Another difficulty is one of definition. Euthanasia, derived from the Greek combining forms eu meaning good and thanatos meaning death, has historically been identified with the mercy killing of hopelessly sick human beings and animals. However, in the current period, under the general category of euthanasia fall a number of discrete end-of-life terms, which are used in a variety of ways. Moral differences in definition may seem subtle, but precisely for that reason, they are not insignificant. They are an aspect of a debate that is not resolved legally and medically, chiefly because it is not resolved morally.

In a 1994 report by the American Medical Association's (AMA) Council on Ethical and Judicial affairs, euthanasia is the name given to a physician's

. . .
letting die" such that whether letting someone die, as opposed to actively intervening to fulfill a rational wish, sufficiently honors a dying person's rights. Humphry and Wickett pose questions faced by one who might perform an act either enabling or causing a death that is requested by the dying. 1. Do my religious and philosophical beliefs permit me to participate in this requested death? 2. Am I upholding the dying person's autonomy--his free choice in life's decisions--by helping? . . . Am I playing God? What about a possible miracle cure? Does the patient have a civic duty to remain alive? What about the patient's responsibility to his family? (Humphry and Wickett 296). Saying life is intolerable does not make it so, and judgments about others' competence in self-determination are not necessarily valid--even when the one saying so is the patient, even when the patient is believed! But it is one thing to say that voluntary active or passive euthanasia made makes for others' moral dilemma or creates a risk that unscrupulous persons will manipulate a dying person's fate; we start there. It is quite another, and much more problematic, to make a uniform characterization of imminent-death cases and argue a highly specific, idiosyn
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Approximate Word count = 3362
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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