Euthanasia
Euthanasia
The controversy in 2005 about Terri Schiavo and her husband's attempts to remove her life sustaining treatment sparked not only a legal battle, but a worldwide deliberation. The 41-year-old woman was brain-damaged and after three years was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Despite her statements that she would not wish to be kept alive by a machine and her husband's petitions to take out the feeding tube, her family refused to pull the plug in hopes that she would eventually reawake. People reviled her treatment as euthanasia ending the life of a person suffering from a terminal or incurable condition. Terri Schiavo's case caught the attention of the public and was a catalyst of debate. In correspondence of Michael
Schiavo's viewpoint, Euthanasia and assisted suicide should be legalized when patients are terminally ill, suffering from pain, have a strong death wish and proper justification for it.
Voluntary euthanasia is defined as the act of ending the life of a person suffering from a terminal or incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment. Therefore, the person may no longer wish to live, and only then should euthanasia be justifiable.
Euthanasia may either be direct or indirect. Indirect euthanasia is when a patient takes the final step to end their own life. Direct euthanasia usually involves doctors aiding the patient in taking the final step. There are three types of direct euthanasia voluntary, involuntary, and involuntary. Nonvoluntary euthanasia is the killing of a person without their own approval or their surrogate's knowledge. Involuntary is the type that most people are worried about. Involuntary euthanasia appeared in Hitler's Germany as a means of murder. The person is euthanized even after they or their surrogate refuses. Many people seem to think that if voluntary euthanasia is legalized, it will escalate to the...
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