Euthanasia and the law in Australia. J Law Med. Palliative medicine. Canada: Saunders; Chapter 22, Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide; p. USA: Saunders; Chapter 2, Bioethics in the practice of medicine; p. Ethics and law for the health professions. New South Wales: Federation Press; Intensive Care Med. Med J Aust. Euthanasia and assisted suicide: A liberal approach versus the traditional moral view.
Legalised euthanasia will violate the rights of vulnerable patients. Nargus is passionate about writing on topics that are relevant to the practice of medicine and aims to incorporate medical journalism in her future career as a doctor. Introduction The topic of euthanasia is one that is shrouded with much ethical debate and ambiguity.
Arguments for and against euthanasia There are many arguments that have been put forward for and against euthanasia. For Rights-based argument 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. Conflicts of interest None declared. Correspondence N Ebrahimi: nargus. Ethical decisions in end-of-life care. The dutch euthanasia act and related issues. This view is controversial.
Some claim the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary treatment is artificial, contrived, vague, or constantly changing as technology progresses. Death intended vs. If the death was intended it is wrong but if the death was anticipated it might be morally acceptable. This reasoning relies on the moral principle called the principle of double effect.
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Student Resources Faculty Resources. More Search. Can't find what you're looking for? Pages No Results. Center for Health Ethics. Section Menu. Next, it is hard to see why moving from voluntary to non-voluntary euthanasia is supposed to be psychologically inevitable.
Why should those who support the legalization of voluntary euthanasia, because they value the autonomy of the individual, find it psychologically easier, in consequence, to endorse the killing of those who are not able competently to request assistance with dying?
What reason is there to believe that they will, as a result of their support for voluntary euthanasia, be psychologically driven to endorse a practice of non-voluntary euthanasia? Finally, since there is nothing arbitrary about distinguishing voluntary euthanasia from non-voluntary euthanasia because the line between them is based on clear principles , there can be no substance to the charge that only by arbitrarily drawing a line between them could non-voluntary euthanasia be avoided were voluntary euthanasia to be legalized.
The former is easily dismissed as an indication of an inevitable descent from voluntary euthanasia to non-voluntary. There never was a policy in favor of, or a legal practice of, voluntary euthanasia in Germany in the s to the s see, for example, Burleigh There was, prior to Hitler coming to power, a clear practice of killing some disabled persons.
But it was never suggested that their being killed was justified by reference to their best interests; rather, it was said that society would be benefited. Since the publication of the Remmelink Report in into the medical practice of euthanasia in The Netherlands, it has frequently been said that the Dutch experience shows that legally protecting voluntary euthanasia is impossible without also affording shelter to the non-voluntary euthanasia that will follow in its train see, e.
In the period since that report there have been a further four national studies of the practice of euthanasia in The Netherlands. These studies were carried out in , , and respectively see, e. The findings from these national studies have consistently shown that there is no evidence for the existence of such a slippery slope. Among the specific findings the following are worth mentioning: of those terminally ill persons who have been assisted to die about sixty per cent have clearly been cases of voluntary euthanasia as it has been characterised in this entry; of the remainder, the vast majority of cases were of patients who at the time of their medically assisted deaths were no longer competent.
It might be thought that these deaths ought to be regarded as instances of non-voluntary euthanasia. But, in fact, it would be inappropriate to regard them as such.
Here is why. For the overwhelming majority of these cases, the decisions to end life were taken only after consultation between the attending doctor s and close family members, and so can legitimately be thought of as involving substituted judgements. Moreover, according to the researchers, the overwhelming majority of these cases fit within either of two common practices that occur in countries where voluntary euthanasia has not been legalized, namely, that of terminal sedation of dying patients, and that of giving large doses of opioids to relieve pain while foreseeing that this will also end life.
In a very few cases, there was no consultation with relatives, though in those cases there were consultations with other medical personnel. The researchers contend that these instances are best explained by the fact that families in The Netherlands strictly have no final legal authority to act as surrogate decision-makers for incompetent persons.
For these reasons the researchers maintain that non-voluntary euthanasia is not widely practised in The Netherlands. That there have only been a handful of prosecutions of Dutch doctors for failing to follow agreed procedures Griffiths, et al.
A similar picture to the one in The Netherlands has emerged from studies of the operation of the law concerning physician-assisted suicide in Oregon. Indeed, in a recent wide-ranging study of attitudes and practices of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide covering two continents, a prominent critic of these practices has concluded in agreement with his co-authors that little evidence exists of abuse, particularly of the vulnerable see Emanuel, et al. Unfortunately, insufficient time has elapsed for appropriate studies to be conducted in the other jurisdictions that have legalized either voluntary euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.
Finally, some commentators have pointed out that there may, in reality, be more danger of the line between voluntary and non-voluntary euthanasia being blurred if euthanasia is practised in the absence of legal recognition, since there will, in those circumstances, be neither transparency nor monitoring which cannot be said of The Netherlands, Belgium, Oregon and so on. None of this is to suggest that it is not necessary to ensure the presence of safeguards against potential abuse of legally protected voluntary euthanasia.
This is particularly important for the protection of those who have become incompetent by the time decisions need to be taken about whether to assist them to die.
Furthermore, it is, of course, possible that the reform of any law may have unintended effects. However, if the arguments outlined above are sound and the experience in the The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, along with the more limited experience in several states in the United States, is, for the present, not only the best evidence we have that they are sound, but the only relevant evidence , that does not seem very likely. It is now well-established in many jurisdictions that competent patients are entitled to make their own decisions about life-sustaining medical treatment.
That is why they can refuse such treatment even when doing so is tantamount to deciding to end their life. In consequence, extending the right of self-determination to cover cases of voluntary euthanasia does not require a dramatic shift in legal policy. Nor do any novel legal values or principles need to be invoked. Indeed, the fact that suicide and attempted suicide are no longer criminal offences in many jurisdictions indicates that the central importance of individual self-determination in a closely analogous context has been accepted.
The fact that voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have not been more widely decriminalized is perhaps best explained along a similar line to the one that has frequently been offered for excluding the consent of the victim as a justification for an act of killing, namely the difficulties thought to exist in establishing the genuineness of the consent. But, the establishment of suitable procedures for giving consent to voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide is surely no harder than establishing procedures for competently refusing burdensome or otherwise unwanted medical treatment.
The latter has already been accomplished in many jurisdictions, so the former should be achievable as well. Suppose that the moral case for legalizing voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide does come to be judged more widely as stronger than the case against legalization, and they are made legally permissible in more jurisdictions than at present. Should doctors take part in the practice? Should only doctors perform voluntary euthanasia? These questions ought to be answered in light of the best understanding of what it is to provide medical care.
The proper administration of medical care should promote the welfare of patients while respecting their individual self-determination. It is these twin values that should guide medical care, not the preservation of life at all costs, or the preservation of life without regard to whether patients want their lives prolonged should they judge that life is no longer of benefit or value to them. Many doctors in those jurisdictions where medically assisted death has been legalized and, to judge from available survey evidence, in other liberal democracies as well, see the practice of voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide as not only compatible with their professional commitments but also with their conception of the best medical care for the dying.
That being so, doctors of the same conviction in jurisdictions in which voluntary medically assisted death is currently illegal should no longer be prohibited by law from lending their professional assistance to competent terminally ill persons who request assistance with dying because of irremediable suffering or because their lives no longer have value for them. Young latrobe.
Introduction 2. A Moral Case for Voluntary Euthanasia 4. Five Conditions Often Proposed as Necessary for Candidacy for Voluntary Euthanasia Advocates of voluntary euthanasia typically contend that if a person is suffering from a terminal illness; is unlikely to benefit from the discovery of a cure for that illness during what remains of her life expectancy; is, as a direct result of the illness, either suffering intolerable pain, or only has available a life that is unacceptably burdensome e.
A Moral Case for Voluntary Euthanasia One central ethical contention in support of voluntary euthanasia is that respect for persons demands respect for their autonomous choices as long as those choices do not result in harm to others. Bibliography Beauchamp, T. Bernat, J. Gert, and R. Biggar, N. Bradley, B. Brock, D. Burleigh, M. Cavanaugh, T. Dworkin, R. Emanuel, E.
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