Ethics 1
Ethics 1.
Assignment: Find/Review an ethical article using the following as an Example. (Must be a scholarly peer reviewed source) 500-650 words
Example:
Ethics in the News
Title of article: “Aid in Dying Soon Will be Available to More Americans. Few Will Choose It.” Link to article https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/health/aid-in-dying-states.html
Date of article: July 8, 2019
Ethical questions raised by this article: (WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE WHY HOW)
– What determines “terminally ill” patients?
– What are the numbers of physician aid deaths per year?
– Who decides when a life is worth living verses not worth living?
– Why is physician aid death prohibited by religious group?
– What are the current laws for lethal prescriptions?
II. My first reaction to the ethical issues raised by this article:
An act-utilitarian would say that euthanasia is morally permissible because it results in the greatest happiness for all people involved. When someone is ill, not only is the patient suffering, but family members and close friends suffer as well. If the patient’s situation was hopeless and had no chance of surviving, an act-utilitarian would decide that the greatest net happiness would result from killing the patient or letting him die. As the article stated, Oregon’s legislature approved a law stating that physician’s with patients, who they believe will die within 15 days, has a waiting period, which can decide how an act-utilitarian can identify a person having no chance of surviving.
III. Someone taking the opposite point of view might say this:
The view from the Natural Law theory, would say that any sort of euthanasia and physician-aid suicide is permissible wrong. It is wrong in any way because people have a moral duty to preserve any life. With allowing ill patients to make their own choices on whether to live or die through a drug, is morally wrong because life is not being saved and death is not naturally occurring.
IV. What I think after considering these issues further and why I think the way I do:
A Kantian Theorist could go about euthanasia in different ways. One approach can be that euthanasia is morally wrong because we are treating a person’s body as a disposable thing, so how could you see how much happiness is developed, if one is treating another as disposable trash? How would it differ though if someone is in a comma? As a Kantian Theorist, one would say it is permissible because the patient is no longer a human.
V. One connection I can make between this article and something else I know about (whether from personal experience, school, a book I have read, a movie I’ve seen or anything else):
I think Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia should be allowed and should be a patient’s choice. I think that there should be certain guidelines and rules, as Oregon has the 15-day limit. I believe that we all have a right to our own bodies, and if someone is suffering and going through unbearable pain, they should have the choice. Recently in my life, one of my best friends suffered from Leukemia for 2 years. She missed many of our school events and day to day childhood memories. Doctors told her she only would have 4 months left to live if the chemo didn’t begin to work. The pain that her family and I watched her go through every day, was painful to see and she was done fighting. There were many nights near the end, where she wished she could just give up and let go because she was mentally and physically exhausted from the pain. She passed away two summers ago, and even though it was painful for all of us of her passing, I knew she was no longer in pain. I believe with certain guidelines and procedures; people should have a right to their own body and decisions when it comes to being ill.