The term «euthanasia» has a Greek origin and it means a «good death» (pleasant, beautiful). In ancient Greece euthanasia had no medical meaning and meant a happy death for their country. An English philosopher Francis Bacon (1561-1626) introduced the term euthanasia into the scientific usage. In 1623 in his work «On the dignity and enhancement of science» (2008) he said that doctors not only have to restore health, but also relieve pain and anguish even when there is no hope. In such cases doctors have to make the death easy and quiet. In his work Bacon outlines the modern medical approach to the terminally ill patients.
Ian Dowbiggin (2007) writes that «in the XX century some euthanasia advocates would look back fondly on this viewpoint and cite it («good death») as a reason for overturning accepted interpretations of the value of human life. But in the short term, the ancient Roman definition of a good death was toppled by the revolutionary Christian doctrine upholding the sanctity of life and condemning anything that resembled suicide, assisted suicide, or mercy killing.»
We have compared three articles to find out what doctors and the modern society think of an assisted suicide nowadays.
The first article we have analyzed is «Euthanasia is not medical treatment» written by J. Donald Boudreau and Margaret A. Somerville. Authors checked the history and public opinion on euthanasia and came to a conclusion that almost everyone thinks that the assisted suicide is carried out by the physicians. This is not the case and we would like to stress a few anchor points of the article. First of all, opponents and proponents of euthanasia agree that the human life has to be respected. This is the only thing they agree on. Boudreau and Somerville stress that whoever advocates euthanasia doesn’t realize its impact on society, medicine and the law. Moreover, there are proposals emerging according to which physicians should not perform assisted suicide as this is the violation of the Hippocratic Oath.
The second article by Nargus Ebrahimi is called «The ethics of euthanasia». Author explores different opinions, but because he wrote for Australian Medical Student Journal (currently euthanasia is legal in Australia) he tends to agree with proponents of the «mercy killing». He says that «people have a right to make their own decisions regarding death, and that euthanasia is intended to alleviate pain and suffering.» He also explored an interesting opinion that «active euthanasia is not morally worse than the withdrawal or withholding of medical treatment, and erroneously describe this practice as «passive euthanasia.» Ebrahimi wrote an article which has almost the same conclusion as the article by Boudreau and Somerville: medicine stands on the crossroad and a long ethical debate on the topic is emerging.
Finally, the third article shows us the Dutch point of view in «Two decades of research on euthanasia from the Netherlands. What have we learnt and what questions remain?» Authors stress that medicine has stepped «on the slippery slope». Not all cases of mercy killing were reported to the review committees. Those assisted killings that are not reported involve use of opioids and are not considered to be euthanasia. As authors in previously analyzed articles they agree that patients have a right to choose, but continuous attention in health care policy and medical training has to be given to distinguish limits when euthanasia has to be considered a murder.
Works Cited
Bacon, Francis. The Major Works. Ed. Brian Vickers. Oxford World's Classics, 2008. Print
Boudreau, Donald , and Somerville Margaret. «Euthanasia is not medical treatment». British
Medical Bulletin (2013) : 1–22. Web. 30 November 2014.
Dowbiggin, Ian. A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine. Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2007. Print
Ebrahimi, Nargus. «The ethics of euthanasia». Australian Medical Student Journal v3 i1
(2012) : 73-75. Web. 30 November 2014.
Rietjens, Judith, Paul van der Maas, Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen, Johannes van Delden, and
Agnes van der Heide. «Two Decades of Research on Euthanasia from the Netherlands.
What Have We Learnt and What Questions Remain?» Journal of Bioethical Inquiry
6(3) (2009) : 271–283. Web. 30 November 2014.
