Active Voluntary Euthanasia Essay

“People with a serious illness have priorities besides simply prolonging their lives,” he writes. “If your problem is fixable, we know just what to do. But if it’s not? The fact that we have had no adequate answers to this question is troubling and has caused callousness, inhumanity and extraordinary suffering,” spoken by the renowned physician, Atul Gawande (Fink). The question that he poses is the essence of the controversy of euthanasia that is presented in the medical community today. When a medical issue is no longer solvable through the the conventional practices of medicine, it is becoming seemingly more difficult to address. Care providers are continuously stumbling on the blurred lines of proper healthcare and the duty to live with
This action is performed by someone other than the patient him/herself and is decided at the request of the family and is finalized by the patient’s physician. Active voluntary euthanasia (AVE) is when the patient gives consent to continue with the procedure of its actions, and active non-voluntary euthanasia (NVAE) is defined as the patient requesting euthanasia who is not in a practical state to give his or her consent (Euthanasia). This varying scope of the methods of euthanasia make it important to label which practice an individual is referring to, especially at a global level. Because euthanasia has not gained an international norm, it is often mistakenly thought in being interchangeable with physician assisted suicide, which describes a patient refusing life-sustaining options or a physician complying in giving a patient a lethal drug, with the full knowledge of both parties that it will result in death. This is medically incorrect because it implies that the physician is directly involved in the administration of euthanasia in physician-assisted suicide. In the Netherlands, where all forms of AVE is legal, “euthanasia” is directly translated from its original Greek form, meaning the “good death” (Quill and Battin). Patients considered in this matter
The United States democracy should not legalize AVE and NVAE because it goes against the preset medical origins and ethics of all that the medical world stands grounds upon. Hippocrates, known as the Father of Medicine, believed that it was unethical in medical procedures to administer a medicinal drug that resulted in a purposeful death. The Hippocratic Oath states, “I will neither give a deadly drug to anyone if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect” (Deliberating). By creating an option for a terminally or chronically ill patient that another procedure (euthanasia) exists, an increase in the practice AVE and NVAE will occur. Rather than taking a surgical or palliative care (the practice of administering pain relievers and substitutions), patients will be more inclined to accept and take part in this medical procedure. According to Atul Gawande, Dutch palliative care in the Netherlands has decreased with the increase in the amount of requests of AVE and NVAE (Fink). The medical community tends to view euthanasia with unfavorable regard, yet different practitioners in the field of medicine differ in their opinions depending on their specific practice. Oncologists tend to be inclined to having a negative outlook on the actions of euthanasia, having to treat patients who have chronic diseases (such as the treatment of