Euthanasia involves the intentional killing of a patient by the direct intervention of a physician or another party, ostensibly for the good of the patient or others. The most common form of euthanasia is lethal injection. Euthanasia can be voluntary (at the patient's request), non-voluntary (without the knowledge or consent of the patient) or involuntary (against his or her wishes).
A medical doctor swears an oath before beginning his practice called the Hippocratic Oath. There are two versions now, but the original one is what doctor's for thousands of years have sworn to. Let's take a look at it.
Let's now take a look at some historical facts about euthanasia.
There are some important reasons that euthanasia and assisted suicide should not be available within medical fields.
People living with terminal illness deserve more than the offer of a physician to facilitate their death. They merit true compassion. Accessing expert palliative (hospice) care and comfort care — treating the symptoms and making the patient as comfortable as possible during the natural dying process. Palliative (hospice) care differs from acute care in that it becomes appropriate when aggressive therapies are no longer beneficial to the patient and there is no longer an attempt to cure the disease.
Barriers need to be removed that prevent patients from receiving available treatments for pain and other symptoms — not alleviate the safeguards that protect patients from psychological or financial coercion to choose an untimely death. The goal should not be to legalize physician-assisted suicide but rather to adequately provide available means of care so that patients and their families do not feel the need to consider an early death.
Social acceptance of physician-assisted suicide sends the message that some lives, especially those of elderly, disabled and dependent citizens, have less value, and are not worth living.
The practice of physician-assisted suicide creates a duty to die. Death may become a reasonable substitute to treatment and care as medical costs continue to rise. The patient, and the family members may be encouraged to use this option and be pressed to do so, to alleviate this burden, on the hospital or nursing home, as much as on the one suffering.
Better medical alternatives exist to physician-assisted suicide. However, they are not brought to the light as much as they should, family members need to be more engaged, and aggressive in becoming informed to the resources available. Today's pain management techniques can provide relief for up to 95 percent of patients, thus offering true death with dignity.
Physician-assisted suicide often ignores anxiety, depression, and family problems, which is a legitimate cry for help.
Physician-assisted suicide gives too much power to doctors, threatening patient autonomy by allowing physicians to decide whether a patient lives or dies. This is occurring now in the Netherlands, Europe.
The practice of physician-assisted suicide threatens to destroy the delicate trust relationship between doctor and patient – a relationship based on the patient's belief that his or her physician will pursue the goal of protecting life.
Physician-assisted suicide opens the door to euthanasia. Then, when this boundary is overstepped, where is this going to lead? Where will this mindset go next? Who else will be termed “better off dead?”
"In a society as obsessed with the costs of health care and the principle of utility, the dangers of the slippery slope... are far from fantasy...
Assisted suicide is a half-way house, a stop on the way to other forms of direct euthanasia, for example, for incompetent patients by advance directive or suicide in the elderly. So, too, is voluntary euthanasia a half-way house to involuntary and non-voluntary euthanasia. If terminating life is a benefit, the reasoning goes, why should euthanasia be limited only to those who can give consent? Why need we ask for consent?"
Now, let's take a look at the most important reason for not allowing this.
Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
In the beginning, God made us in His image, in His likeness. We are made to bring honor, glory, and praise to Him in the time we are here on this earth. Despite the claim of atheists that we came from a primordial soup, and evolved into the human form we are now; God claims to be the mastermind of our creation. I find this much more regal, and honorable, and makes infinitely more sense than any atheists claims. It takes much more faith to believe their theories, and they have been proven in error in their facts so many times, that I'll stay with the bible.
When God created man and woman, he set guidelines for us to live by. They weren't difficult to understand.
Down through the ages we continue to see the consequences of mans own rebellion, in sin, hatred, murder, and every kind of evil that can be perpetrated against each other.
And this is really the answer to the steady increase in assisted death, not only in the elderly, disabled, and terminally ill, but in populations of countries. Life and death has been taken out of the hands of God, into the hands of people, who do not always hold to the values of life being precious, and God given. Agenda's, and rationalization become the factor's that either work to keep you alive, or bring it to an end. But in the process it is carefully done within the parameters of the medical ethics of the profession, and country involved; in order to keep the veneer of social acceptance. That's why it's not called what it really is-murder.
Lorna Couillard