Euthanasia 17
Imagine your mother as an old woman. She has not been felling well, so she goes into the doctors office for some tests she is found to have cancer of the liver. She is given an operation shortly there after however it dose not go well the cancer has spread and they can not take it all out the blood she was given in the operation was bad, HIV positive. The doctors our sorry for there mistake and give her only one year to live. Over the next couple of months her conditions get worse she comes down with a common cold and her body can not fight it. She is in and out of the Hospital she can not walk and has trouble eating she has lost all her hair from the radiation and the pain just gets worse with every passing day. She is eighty-one years old and tells you she fells her time is up she has done all she has wanted she has said her good byes and she wants help out. What do you do? Is the answer euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide or do you let her live out the rest of her short life in pain and misery. In the "The Wrongfulness of Euthanasia" by J. Gay-Williams there is three many arguments against euthanasia: the argument from nature, the argument from self-interest, and the argument from practical eff
The second of his arguments is self interest that it is in our own self-interest to stay alive as long as possible. Because with today's doctors being human and humans making mistakes those doctors could make a mistaken diagnosis or a mistaken prognosis. That with a mistaken diagnosis we may be led to believe that we dying of a disease when actually we do not even have a disease. (Gay-Williams p.454) There are also many advances made to medicine every year and if you where to give up on your life because of a disease or illness you would not be looking out for your own self-interest. With experimental procedure or a hitherto untried technique or the chance of spontaneous remission you could be cured from what ever disease or illness you had.(Gay-Williams p.454) Now knowing all the argument against euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide we can take a look at what is wrong with them. First is the argument that every human desire life and wants to continue living, but what is life. In Compton's computer dictionary it is defined as a source of vigor or liveliness that property or quality of humans, plants, and animals that distinguishes them from inorganic matter or dead organisms, characterized by the ingestion of nutrients, the storage and use of energy, the excretion of wastes, growth, reproduction. So if one was so put out so much by an illness or a disease that they did not show signs of vigor or liveliness or use of energy dose that mean they are not alive. No all it means that you can have life with out obvious signs of life. However is that what everyone desires a life with obvious signs of life like movement of the body or the ability to communicate. That physician-assisted suicide rejects our most basic human characteristic to be alive. To be in a coma and to have no use of your body or mind to stay alive would be to go against other human characteristics like people getting out of dangerous situations as fast or by any means possible and the only way out of a incurable coma is death. Utilitari
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Approximate Word count = 1367
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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