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Introduction: Managing Mortality
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10806 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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3 / 1993 |
494 Words |
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It has been said that euthanasia could very well supplant abortion as the "life" issue of the next century.
As baby boomers age, and especially as they begin to fill the deathbeds of America in record numbers, euthanasia issues will increasingly seize the attention of the media, the courts, the legislatures, and even the television and film industry. Even today, with members of the baby boom generation beginning to feel the first intimations of mortality as young friends and relatives die of hear disease, cancer, or AIDS, and as they themselves experience the nondescript pains of a gradually aging forty something body, we can see how emotions on the issue are building steam and how tensions could mount to abortion-like dimensions.
And there is a thicket of contentious ethical issues surrounding euthanasia. Does each individual have an absolute right to mandate the time and nature of his death? Who can best decide to withdraw or withhold medical treatment from a comatose patient: his doctors or his relatives? And what criteria should be used to decide the moment of death: brain death? Falling into a persistent vegetative state? Multiorgan failure? Diagnosis of terminal illness? Severe dementia? Or simply sharp reduction in quality of life such as occurs in Parkinson's disease or quadriplegia? If physicians deem further treatment of a terminally ill patient to be hopeless and nonbeneficial, does the patient still have a right to that treatment, even though it might mean just a few more days or months of virtually insentient life and even though it might be absorbing medical resources that could be applied to saving lives elsewhere? The questions go on and on.
So it seems appropriate to examine the ethical issues involved in euthanasia in some depth, which we attempt to do in the succeeding articles.
Stephen G. Post in his piece recognizes the ethical acceptability of euthanasia in some cases but also criticizes it as part of today's rage for control over all aspects of human life. He sees the current demand for euthanasia as simply a filling of the void left by the ebb from the health care field of truly compassionate caring. He also explores the morality of prenatal genetic testing.
Rosemarie Tong finds there to be six forms of euthanasia, which differ from one another on the basis of two elements: the action taken by the care giver (namely, withdrawal or withholding of medical treatment various application of a lethal
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