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yongernn teo

Ethics and Values Case Study- Mercy Killing, Euthanasia - 8 views

www.brainmass.com/...86151

Euthanasia

shared by yongernn teo on 21 Oct 09 - Cached
  • yongernn teo on 21 Oct 09
     
    THE ETHICAL PROBLEM: Allowing someone to die, mercy death, and mercy killing, Euthanasia: A 24-year-old man named Robert who has a wife and child is paralyzed from the neck down in a motorcycle accident. He has always been very active and hates the idea of being paralyzed. He also is in a great deal of pain, an he has asked his doctors and other members of his family to "put him out of his misery." After several days of such pleading, his brother comes into Robert's hospital ward and asks him if he is sure he still wants to be put out of his misery. Robert says yes and pleads with his brother to kill him. The brother kisses and blesses Robert, then takes out a gun and shoots him, killing him instantly. The brother later is tried for murder and acquitted by reason of temporary insanity. Was what Robert's brother did moral? Do you think he should have been brought to trial at all? Do you think he should have been acquitted? Would you do the same for a loved one if you were asked? THE DISCUSSION: In my opinion, the most dubious part about the case would be the part on Robert pleading with his brother, asking his brother to kill him. This could be his brother's own account of the incident and could/could not have been a plea by Robert. 1) With assumption that Robert indeed pleaded with his brother to kill him, an ethical analysis as such could be derived: That Robert's brother was only respecting Robert's choice and killed him because he wanted to relieve him from his misery. This could be argued to be ethical using a teleoloigical framework where the focus is on the end-result and the consequences that entails the action. Here, although the act of killing per se may be wrong and illegal, Robert was able to relieved of his pain and suffering. 2) With an assumption that Robert did not plea with his brother to kill him and that it was his brother's own decision to relieve Robert of all-suffering: In this case, the b
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Elaine Ong on 22 Oct 09
     
    I find euthanasia to be a very interesting ethical dilemma. Even I myself am caught in the middle. Euthanasia has been termed as 'mercy killing' and even 'happy death'. Others may simply just term it as being 'evil'. Is it right to end someone's life even when he or she pleads you to do so? In the first place, is it even right to commit suicide? Once someone pulls off the main support that's keeping the person alive, such as the feeding tube, there is no turning back. Hmm..Come to think of it, technology is kind of unethical by being made available, for in the past, when someone is dying, they had the right to die naturally. Now, scientific technology is 'forcing' us to stay alive and cling on to a life that may be deemed being worthless if we were standing outside our bodies looking at our comatose selves. Then again, this may just be MY personal standpoint. But I have to argue, who gave technology the right to make me a worthless vegetable!(and here I am, attaching a value/judgement onto an immobile human being..) Hence, being incompetent in making decisions for my unconscious self (or perhaps even brain dead), who should take responsibility for my life, for my existence? And on what basis are they allowed to help me out? Taking the other side of the argument, against euthanasia, we can say that the act of ending someone else's life is the act of destroying societal respect for life. Based on the utilitarian perspective, we are not thinking of the overall beneficence for society and disregarding the moral considerations encompassed within the state's interest to preserve the sanctity of all life. It has been said that life in itself takes priority over all other values. We should let the person live so as to give him/her a chance to wake up or hope for recovery (think comatose patients). But then again we can also argue that life is not the top of the hierarchy! A life without rights is as if not living a life at all? By removing the patient
  • juliet huang on 28 Oct 09
     
    as a human being, you supposedly have a right to live, whether you are mobile or immobile. however, i think that, in the case of euthanasia, you 'give up' your rights when you "show" that you are no longer able to serve the pre-requisites of having the right. for example, if "living" rights are equate to you being able to talk, walk, etc etc, then, obviously the opposite means you no longer are able to perform up to the expectations of that right. then again, it is very subjective as to who gets to make that criteria!
  • Magdaleine on 02 Nov 09
     
    hmm interesting.. however, a question i have is who and when can this "right" be "given up"? when i am a victim in a car accident, and i lost the ability to breathe, walk and may need months to recover. i am unconscious and the doctor is unable to determine when am i gonna regain consciousness. when should my parents decide i can no longer be able to have any living rights? and taking elaine's point into consideration, is committing suicide even 'right'? if it is legally not right, when i ask someone to take my life and wrote a letter that it was cus i wanted to die, does that make it committing suicide only in the hands of others?
  • Low Yunying on 04 Nov 09
     
    Similarly, I question the 'rights' that you have to 'give up' when you no longer 'serve the pre-requisites of having the right'. If the living rights means being able to talk and walk, then where does it leave infants? Where does it leave people who may be handicapped? Have their lost their rights to living?
Low Yunying

Ethics and Euthanasia - 0 views

Article: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/09/italy.euthanasia/index.html The debate on Euthanasia is definitely not new. It is interesting in this case where Euthanasia is illegal in Italy, b...

Ethics Euthanasia

started by Low Yunying on 19 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

Epiphenom: Suicide, age and poison - 0 views

epiphenom.fieldofscience.com/...suicide-age-and-poison.html

Suicide Religion Euthanasia

shared by Weiye Loh on 05 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • Since then many studies reinforced this theory, showing that Catholicism, and indeed religion in general, seems to protect against suicide. Unfortunately, almost all these studies have been flawed - most often because they looked at average suicide rates and average religious beliefs across particular societies. They didn't look at the individual characteristics of those people who commit suicide.
  • Three new studies have addressed this problem. Each of them them takes advantage of new data to explore in some detail the link between religion and reduced suicide.
  • Matthias Egger, at the University of Bern in Switzerland, has cleverly linked census data to death records - not at all as straightforward as you might imagine. What that gives, for the first time, is a large database with reliable records of individual's religious affiliation in the last few years before they took their life.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • as Durkeheim found when looking at Swiss data a century earlier, Catholics had the lowest suicide rate and Protestants higher. What's more, Egger found that the unaffiliated had the highest of all.
  • ne thing that jumped out was that the gap was much bigger for older people. At ages 35-44, there was essentially no difference. The gap grows gradually with age: in the oldest group (aged 85-94), Protestants are twice as likely as Catholics to commit suicide, and the unaffiliated four times as likely.
  • Strangely enough, the effect was particularly strong for death by poisoning. That's a perplexing result, until you remember that Switzerland is one of the few countries where assisted suicide is legal (so long as the motive is not selfish). There are several societies in Switzerland that provide assisted dying, with the usual method being an injection of barbiturates. On the death record, that's recorded as a death by poisoning.
  • That's not to say that Durkheim was wrong about religion. Social integration is important in reducing suicide, and that may well have contributed to the differences seen. Egger found that married people, and those living with others, also had lower suicide rates. But these data couldn't show that religion affected social integration.
  • Weiye Loh on 05 Oct 10
     
    sociologist Émile Durkheim made an important discovery: across Europe, Protestant regions had a higher suicide rate that Catholic regions. This, he said, was because Catholicism created more integrated societies. In today's parlance, Catholicism generates more social capital.
Weiye Loh

TODAYonline | World | On BBC: Assisted suicide of terminally ill man - 0 views

www.todayonline.com/...-suicide-of-terminally-ill-man

Euthanasia

shared by Weiye Loh on 09 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Mr Smedley was such a private man that none of those friends had known in advance that he had planned his own assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where he drank poison and died on Dec 10 last year. A few days after Mr Smedley's death, his close friends found individually-written letters from him in their post, telling each one how much they had meant to him.
  • They were in for a greater surprise when they were joined at his memorial service by Sir Terry, the author and campaigner, and the BBC crew that had filmed Mr Smedley's final moments. Unknown to all but his closest family, Mr Smedley invited Sir Terry to accompany him and his wife Christine, 60, to the clinic in Switzerland. Moments before he died, said Sir Terry: "I shook hands with Peter and he said to me 'Have a good life', and he added 'I know I have'." When a clinic worker asked him if he was ready to drink the poison that would end his life, Mr Smedley said: "Yes" and added: "I'd like to thank you all." After Mr Smedley died, said Sir Terry: "I was spinning not because anything bad had happened but something was saying', A man is dead... that's a bad thing,' but somehow the second part of the clause chimes in with, 'but he had an incurable disease that was dragging him down, so he's decided of his own free will to leave before he was dragged'. So it's not a bad thing."
Jody Poh

Asia's attitude to assisted suicide - 3 views

euthanasia ethics rights

started by Jody Poh on 20 Oct 09 no follow-up yet
Weiye Loh

The Good Short Life With A.L.S. - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...10als.html

Death Euthanasia Bioethics

shared by Weiye Loh on 13 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • Lingering would be a colossal waste of love and money.
  • I’d rather die. I respect the wishes of people who want to live as long as they can. But I would like the same respect for those of us who decide — rationally — not to. I’ve done my homework. I have a plan. If I get pneumonia, I’ll let it snuff me out. If not, there are those other ways. I just have to act while my hands still work: the gun, narcotics, sharp blades, a plastic bag, a fast car, over-the-counter drugs, oleander tea (the polite Southern way), carbon monoxide, even helium. That would give me a really funny voice at the end. I have found the way. Not a gun. A way that’s quiet and calm. Knowing that comforts me. I don’t worry about fatty foods anymore. I don’t worry about having enough money to grow old. I’m not going to grow old. I’m having a wonderful time.
  • Weiye Loh on 13 Jul 11
     
    We obsess in this country about how to eat and dress and drink, about finding a job and a mate. About having sex and children. About how to live. But we don't talk about how to die. We act as if facing death weren't one of life's greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges. Believe me, it is. This is not dull. But we have to be able to see doctors and machines, medical and insurance systems, family and friends and religions as informative - not governing - in order to be free.
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