Euthanasi The Killing Of A Patient - 1698 Words

Euthanasia, also known as assisted suicide,has continued to be an ongoing debate within today’s news. Euthanasia is known as the killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or in an irreversible coma. Some interpret euthanasia as the practice of ending a life in a painless manner. Many disagree with this interpretation, because it needs to include a reference to intractable suffering. There are many different classifications of euthanasia that one must understand before taking a deeper dive into the topic. There is voluntary and involuntary euthanasia.The difference between the two is that one is when the person decides to go through with it, and the other is when someone else decides to have that person†¦show more content†¦They also found that doctors working in palliative care were more likely to be against assisted dying. .Debates about the ethics of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide date from ancient Greece and Rome. In the 4th Ce ntury BC, the Hippocratic Oath was written by Hippocrates, the father of medicine. Euthanasia comes from the Greek words, Eu (good) and Thanatosis (death) and it means Good Death, Gentle and Easy Death. This word has come to be used for mercy killing. In this sense euthanasia means the active death of the patient, or, inactive in the case of dehydration and starvation.The first recorded use of the word euthanasia was by Suetonius, a Roman historian, in his De Vita Caesarum--Divus Augustus (The Lives of the Caesars--The Deified Augustus) to describe the death of Augustus Caesar. In the United States specifically, a turning point in the euthanasia debate occurred after the Karen Ann Quinlan (1954-1985) case.When Quinlan was 21 she lost consciousness after returning home from a party. She had consumed diazepam, dextropropoxyphene, and alcohol. She collapsed and stopped breathing. Several months later, while being kept alive on a ventilator, her parents asked the hospital to discontinue active care, so that she could be allowed to die. The hospital refused, there were subsequent legal battles, and a tribunal eventually ruled in her parent s favor. Quinlan was removed from the mechanical ventilation in 1976 - but she