How is euthanasia unethical

Where the assistance of the physician is intentionally and deliberately directed at enabling an individual to end his or her own life, the physician acts unethically. This proposal was strongly opposed and was retracted. Rather than make their controversial case before the conference, the Canadian and Dutch parties turned a minor scandal into a reason to leave the WMA altogether.

The inaugural speech contained passages that had been plagiarized by a speechwriter; despite the WMA President's public apology, saying he was not aware of this, the CMA, without consulting with its wider membership, withdrew from the WMA, citing unethical conduct , and the KNMG also later withdrew, citing the same reasons. American health care is undergoing tumultuous changes and showing signs of strain. A recent Institute of Medicine report attests to persistent deficiencies in care and social support that seriously ill people and their families experience.

Witnessing the suffering of our relatives, friends and, for clinicians, our patients, gives rise to moral distress. It is not surprising that support for physician-assisted suicide is also rising. The age-old dictum that doctors must not kill patients can appear antiquated, out of touch with hard realities, and even heartless. On the contrary, this is when such principles are most important. Prohibitions on medical practice protect vulnerable patients and the public from the power that doctors wield due to their specialized knowledge and skills.

People who are poor, or old and frail, or simply have long-standing disabilities, may worry that when they become acutely ill, doctors might see their lives as not worth living and compassionately act to end their supposed misery. Advocates of euthanasia argue that a patient has the right to make the decision about when and how they should die, based on the principles of autonomy and self-determination.

Furthermore, it is argued that as part of our human rights, there is a right to make our own decisions and a right to a dignified death.

It is said that relieving a patient from their pain and suffering by performing euthanasia will do more good than harm. In line with this view, it is argued that active euthanasia should be permitted just as passive euthanasia is allowed.

James Rachels [12] is a well-known proponent of euthanasia who advocates this view. He states that there is no moral difference between killing and letting die, as the intention is usually similar based on a utilitarian argument.

He illustrates this argument by making use of two hypothetical scenarios. In the first scenario, Smith anticipates an inheritance should anything happen to his six-year-old cousin, and ventures to drown the child while he takes his bath. In a similar scenario, Jones stands to inherit a fortune should anything happen to his six-year-old cousin, and upon intending to drown his cousin, he witnesses his cousin drown on his own by accident and lets him die. Letting a patient die from an incurable disease may be seen as allowing the disease to be the natural cause of death without moral culpability.

The Christian view sees life as a gif offerrom God, who ought not to be off ended by the taking of that life. While autonomy is used by advocates for euthanasia, it also features in the argument against euthanasia. Callahan [9] argues that the notion of self-determination requires that the right to lead our own lives is conditioned by the good of the community, and therefore we must consider risk of harm to the common good.

It is often argued that pain and suffering experienced by patients can be relieved by administering appropriate palliative care, making euthanasia a futile measure. If euthanasia were to become an accepted practice, it may give rise to situations that undermine the rights of vulnerable patients.

Active voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide undermine the doctor-patient relationship, destroying the trust and confi dence built in such a relationship. The judgement that what has worth, intrinsically, somehow does not have worth, is both logically and morally wrong. The ethics of euthanasia is based on dualistic anthropology and wrong moral presuppositions underlying the defence of euthanasia, namely, proportionalism and consequentialism. The basic claim of proponents of the ethics of euthanasia is that human persons are consciously experiencing subjects whose dignity consists of their ability to made choices and to determine their own lives.

Bodily life, according to them, is a condition for personal life because without bodily life one cannot be a consciously experiencing subject.