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7/18/2019 Euthanasia

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Euthanasia; case of Mrs. V

Introduction

Euthanasia has been one of those topics of situational ethics which have been

debated many a times still remain unresolved. Euthanasia has been criticized

severely since last few decades. The contemporary debate on Euthanasia started in

19th

century, about 1848. The topic has been discussed on many a forums, many a

times but has been unresolved. Euthanasia is of two types; Active Euthanasia and

Passive Euthanasia. For quite some, both Active and Passive Euthanasia were

deemed equally condemnable. But then James Rachel, who taught moral philosophy

at University of Miami, gave the world a new perspective. He distinguished Active

Euthanasia from Passive Euthanasia. He gave his arguments in the validity of Passive

Euthanasia and said that it wasn’t like Active Euthanasia, which was almost like

committing the murder of the patient. His paper didn’t turn the views of the world

upside down, but he surely managed to make people skeptic about Passive

Euthanasia. And as a result in 1990s, people started debating about its viability over

the Active Euthanasia. Passive Euthanasia has been termed as assisted suicide by its

critics. It is interesting to mention that Euthanasia has been legalized in some

countries such as Holland, Mexico and Belgium etc. The second most populated

country of the world, India too legalized Passive Euthanasia in 2011 via a ruling of

Supreme Court.

Case study of Mrs. V and moral justifications

Having said so much for the introduction of the euthanasia, we come to the case

study of Euthanasia. We have a patient, named Mrs. V and we have to answer quite

a few questions related to the Euthanasia debate through our case. The first

question before us is the moral permissibility of withholding treatment from a



patient which is incompetent i.e. not showing progress in the treatment. According

to the details of the patient, known to us, the patient doesn’t want to live a

dependant life and the physician of the patient agrees with that too. Nor does her

husband want to look after her if she becomes handicapped or stays on bed for the

whole life. Her husband wants to keep her with comfort, that’s all. And having this

information known to us, it isn’t difficult at all for us to judge that there is some sort

of moral ground available for Passive Euthanasia, as the physician, the patient and

her husband, all share the views that a life of dependency isn’t acceptable to the

patient herself. So the physician should first try to judge the chances of recovery as

soon as possible. If he/she fails, then he/she should withhold the treatment to

perform Passive Euthanasia. Samuel Williams argues that it is the duty of the

medical attendant to know that what does a patient in severe pain or illness wants.

Since the patient and her husband have the views which lead to the support of

Passive euthanasia, the physician should have no problem in going for it.

The circumstances in which Euthanasia should be permissible as well as preferable

are those according to me, where there is more or less some consensus for the

Euthanasia to be performed, the treatment is quite expensive and the physician

knows that chances of the patient being recovered are next to nil. In such cases, the

physician should try to convince the family of the patients for the Euthanasia by

telling them all the possibilities and probabilities. In our case, we have the moral

grounds to perform Euthanasia and considering the fact that Mrs. V is already 73

years old, we may lead our case towards preference of performing Euthanasia since

73 is quite n old age and one cannot predict that how long she’ll live, if not given

Euthanasia.



Life quality or Quality of life is a very vast concept. It has several definitions available

as well. However we are concerned with the physical quality of the life only. Quality

of physical life means that how fit is a particular person, physically off course? A

person with impairments or disabilities isn’t considered to having a good quality

physical life. Now, there appear further cases of quality of physical of life. For

example the case of a newly born disabled child will be different from that of a

grown up disabled person. The severity of disability matters as well. So, we can’t

make a general rule regarding the quality of physical life. We have to see each case

individually. The chances of the recovery of a person should be weighed in such

cases as well. How much affect the impairment or disability will have on the person’s

life, matters as well. How much improvement can a person make, should be

considered as well. I’d take a no for such situations where Euthanasia is to be

performed on a mature/grown up person just because of his/her disability. If once

can perform other functions of life and is unable to perform just one or a couple, it

isn’t justified to me to perform Euthanasia on him. Most of the debaters on

Euthanasia argue that it should be performed only when there is no quality of life

left. This again is not a very clear definition of the permissibility of Euthanasia and is

an absolute verdict. I think that if a pregnant woman comes to know that the fetus

she is carrying, will be a severely disabled child, she should go for abortion after

weighing the probabilities, because doing so will hurt her less than in a situation

where she had a grown up disabled child.

Anyways, coming back to the case before us, i.e. that of Mrs. V, I’d not go for Passive

Euthanasia of I had only this one point to consider, because she has only some issues

with breathing and management functions at present. But since the other things are

validating the Passive Euthanasia, I support it in the case of Mrs. V.



References

Onwuteaka-Philipsen, B. D., van der Heide, A., Koper, D., Keij-Deerenberg, I.,

Rietjens, J. A., Rurup, M. L., ... & van der Maas, P. J. (2003). Euthanasia and other

end-of-life decisions in the Netherlands in 1990, 1995, and 2001. The

Lancet , 362(9381), 395-399.

Rachels, J. (1997). Active and passive euthanasia. Bioethics: An Introduction to the

History, Methods, and Practice, 1-82.

Harris, N. M. (2001). The euthanasia debate. Journal of the Royal Army Medical

Corps, 147 (3), 367-370.

Dworkin, R. M. (1993). Life's dominion: An argument about abortion, euthanasia,

and individual freedom. Random House LLC.

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