Euthanasia

Question: Should human euthanasia be legalized worldwide?
Thesis: Human euthanasia should be legalized worldwide as it enables those whose lives are no longer worth living to end the pain and agony they feel every day; it frees much needed resources for other endeavors and enables humanity to become a much more humane society. What does it mean to be human? If we were to walk into any hospital we might start to wonder. In almost all hospitals, there are people whose only wish is to end their suffering but are kept alive due to outdated social stigmas that only increase their pain. This is why human euthanasia should be legalized worldwide as it allows those whose lives are no longer worth living to end the pain and agony they feel at every moment; frees much needed resources and enables humanity to become a much more humane society. Firstly, allowing euthanasia to be used on humans would allow those whose lives are no longer worth living to end the misery they feel on a daily basis. There are millions of people in hospitals and nursing homes who are suffering needlessly as they struggle against an incurable disease with no chance of survival. For example, in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is both legal and tightly regulated, physician assisted suicide accounts for a mere 2.1% of all deaths annually, a vast majority of which are terminal cancer patients. Legalizing human euthanasia would allow them to end their lives with peace and dignity while surrounded by loved ones. Thus, allowing them to end their lives would also free up the resources and money previously taken up in caring for them. Secondly, allowing human euthanasia would free up the resources used by those whose only wish is to end their suffering. Those resources could be used to ensure that the rest of the population has a greater access to resources and services previously taken up. Long term palliative care for the terminally ill is a huge and ultimately wasteful drain on medical resources. These precious resources are used on patients who has expressed a desire to die, when they could instead be used improving the life of those who wish to live. In addition, these resources could be re-allocated to further research into the diseases the patients are suffering in order to develop either a cure for these diseases or improve the quality of care for future generations. This would in turn create a more humane society by increasing the quality of life worldwide. Proponents of anti-euthanasia argue that the desire to die is caused by depression, that by choosing to end their lives they reject any chance of getting better, and euthanasia is essentially murder, as there are thousands of documented cases where the patient is euthanized without consent. However, even if the depression is treated, a terminal disease is still terminal, and there is no escape, other than death, that can change these circumstances. The British House of Lords Select Committee on Medical Ethics defines euthanasia as "a deliberate intervention undertaken with the express intention of ending a life, to relieve intractable suffering". By refusing them the death of their choosing we are causing unnecessary pain, and we are becoming an unsympathetic or inhumane society. Allowing them the choice would ensure a painless death with the presence of those who love them and would enable us to better ourselves, and by extension society as a whole. In conclusion, legalizing human euthanasia worldwide would enable those whose lives are no longer worth living to end the suffering they feel on a daily basis; it frees up resources and services for other uses and enables our society to become more humanitarian by allowing patients to die at the time of their choice surrounded by those who love them. The question is if you were suffering from a terminal disease, what would you choose?

Work Cited
Guy, Martal. Stern, Theodore A. “The Desire for Death in the Setting of Terminal Illness: A Case Discussion.” National Center for Biotechnology. Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2006. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764532/. Accessed September 20, 2013.
Canadian Institute for Health Information. “Health Care in Canada, 2011: A Focus on Seniors and Aging”. 2011. https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/HCIC_2011_seniors_report_en.pdf. Accessed September 20, 2013

Cited: Guy, Martal. Stern, Theodore A. “The Desire for Death in the Setting of Terminal Illness: A Case Discussion.” National Center for Biotechnology. Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2006. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1764532/. Accessed September 20, 2013. Canadian Institute for Health Information. “Health Care in Canada, 2011: A Focus on Seniors and Aging”. 2011. https://secure.cihi.ca/free_products/HCIC_2011_seniors_report_en.pdf. Accessed September 20, 2013