Final Exam Case Study Josephine Stewart

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Recommended: Ethical issues surrounding euthanasia

Angel Zuleta
Final Exam: Case Analysis
Josephine Stewart is a 78 year old female with a history of diabetes, painful arthritis, and heart arrhythmia so severe that she needed to have a pacemaker inserted. Josephine was diagnosed with non-small lung cancer (NSCLC) with lymph node metastasis which makes her ineligible for surgical resection. After undergoing multiple failed chemotherapy treatments Josephine decides she no longer wants to pursue continuing chemo treatment. She also decided to stop all life preserving treatments including her pacemaker.
In Josephine’s defense I would not consider her choice of stopping chemotherapy or removing her pacemaker euthanasia. She is simply discontinuing a treatment that is causing her continued pain and suffering. Her pacemaker is only adding to the prolonged suffering that her body can no longer endure. In her defense one could argue that her pace maker is a foreighn device in her body that when removed is not the cause of death but rather her tired body and heart would be the cause of her death. …show more content…

He believes this act would be a pure act of euthanasia. In his defense knowingly removing a device that is keeping someone alive is killing them. As a physician he is pro life so by removing this device and causing Joesphines death would be the opposite of his beliefs and what he stands for. Even though this potential killing is voluntary by the patients choice the physician now becomes a part of this killing. “To morally justify euthanasia & physican assisted suicide, both the physician and the patient must show how the killing makes their lives good, or at least less worse than other options and it is never enough for the physician to justify his role in causing death by saying it was done at the patients request.” (Deverttere, 2016,

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