Euthanasia: When Life Is to Be Feared More Than Death

Nathan Haase

Mr. Green

Current Issues 302

10 December 2002

Euthanasia: When life is to be feared more than death

...the elderly patients...are comatose. They weigh

practically nothing. Their skin hangs in heavy

folds on their skeletons. 'These patients must be

fed through gastric tubes pushed down their throats,'

Dr. Peter Haemmerli explains, and that can make even

comatose patients retch and vomit' (Culliton 1273).

Thus, according to Barbara J. Culliton, many severely ill patients must endure much pain.

Not a very pretty scene, is it? Is it right to keep them living in this pain? Wouldn't it be

more humane to give them a painless release from their agony? For this irreversibly comatose

patient euthanasia would be justified. Now consider the patient suffering from malignant cancer

or some other terminal disease.

How "right" is it to keep injecting drugs and performing small operations to keep the

patient alive, only to lengthen his suffering? As in the case of the irreversibly comatose

patient, euthanasia is not only morally justified, it is the only alternative for those truly

concerned with the patient's welfare.

Euthanasia is clinically defined as an "act or practice of painlessly putting to death

persons suffering from incurable conditions or diseases (Bok 1). The word "euthanasia" is

generally also applied to cases in which the doctor withdraws the machines or drugs which are

keeping the patient alive and thus allows the patient to die naturally.

Knight 2

Euthanasia ends pain mercifully and easily. It is used when the pain of degradation of

life or the pain of a terminal disease is greater than the pain of death (Heifetz 5). In these

cases death is not the nightmare experienced in war, but rather an alternative to endless pain.

"At times we must look at death as a welcome release from an untenable life. Death need not be

a source of horror. It can be freedom, a release from agony" (Heifetz 5). This observation by

Dr. Milton D. Heifetz encompasses the purpose of euthanasia: to provide " a welcome