Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Debate Continues
"This could never be a crime in any society which deems itself enlightened." So said Jack Kevorkian on CBS's "60 Minutes" on November 22, on a segment showing the first nationally televised death by euthanasia in the U.S.
Kevorkian offered the footage to CBS to dramatize his campaign for euthanasia for terminally and chronically ill patients. The film shows him giving a lethal injection in September to 52-year-old Thomas Youk, who had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). Kevorkian is shown ending Mr. Youk's life by injecting Seconal to put him to sleep, followed by a powerful muscle relaxant to stop his breathing and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
Kevorkian says on the segment that he provided the footage to force the hand of Michigan prosecutors. "Either they go or I go," he says. "If I'm acquitted, they go, because they know they'll never convict me. If I'm convicted, I will starve to death in prison, so I will go."
In his book, Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, Michael Manning, M.D. says that both euthanasia and assisted suicide (wherein the patient performs the lethal act) involve the premature death of the patient. He defines euthanasia as an action or omission which causes death in order to end suffering(1). Active euthanasia is the deliberate intervention by someone else to end the person's life(2); passive euthanasia means the withdrawal of medical treatment(2), which is allowable if it is done in order to let the patient die on his own. Euthanasia is either voluntary or involuntary, depending on the person's competency to decide. The crux of the euthanasia/assisted suicide debate is r...
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...ternal Medicine 2240 (Oct. 28, 1996)
Lee v. Oregon, 891 F.Supp. 1429 (D. Or. 1995), vacated on other grounds, 107 F.3d 1382 (9th Cir. 1997), cert. denied, 118 S. Ct. 328 (1997).
Manning, Michael,M.D. Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide. New York: Paulist Press, 1998.
"Poll Shows More Would Support Law Using Gentler Language," TimeLines (Jan.-Feb. 1994):9
Rachels, James. "Passive and Active Euthanasia Are Equally Acceptable." Euthanasia. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 1989.
Washington v. Glucksberg, 117 S. Ct. 2258, 2262 n. 7 (1997.
-- -- --. 117 S. Ct. at 2272, quoting United States v. Rutherford, 442 U.S. 544, 558. 1979.
Washington Post, April 4, 1996.
Wennberg, Robert. Terminal Choices: Euthanasia, Suicide, and the Right to Die. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Co.,1990.
Lester, etal V Percadani, etal. United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania. Retrieve October 31, 200 http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/opinions/conner/01v1182a.pdf
Any discussion that pertains to the topic of euthanasia must first include a clear definition of the key terms and issues. With this in mind, it should be noted that euthanasia includes both what has been called physician-assisted "suicide" and voluntary active euthanasia. Physician-assisted suicide involves providing lethal medication(s) available to the patient to be used at a time of the patient’s own choosing (Boudreau, p.2, 2014). Indifferently, voluntary active euthanasia involves the physician taking an active role in carrying out the patient’s request, and usually involves intravenous delivery of a lethal substance. Physician-assisted suicide is felt to be easier psychologically for the physician and patient than euthanasia because
Dworkin, Gerald. " The Nature of Medicine." Euthanasia and Physician Assisted Suicide: For and Against. 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998.
Euthanasia, or mercy killing, can be defined as the "intentional termination of life by another at the explicit request of the person who dies" (Euthanasia). The infamous Dr. Kevorkian is known for assisting many people in their suicides. He was eventually tried and convicted for his role in this area. What crime did he commit? The people whom he assisted sought him out to help them have a calm and peaceful death under their own control. During Dr. Kevorkian's trial, questions were raised suggesting ...
During E. E. Cummings ' life, he made many arguments in favor of individualism and condemned conformity. During a speech at Harvard, he once stated, "So far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art was, is, and forever will be strictly and distinctly a question of individuality" ("E. E. Cummings"). His unique writing style is also a testament to how he valued individuality and creativity—how his poetic style was drastically different from most of the poetry that had been written before him.
According to West’s Encyclopedia of American Law, between 1990 and 1999, a well-known advocate for physician assisted suicide, Jack Kevorkian helped 130 patients end their lives. He began the debate on assisted suicide by assisting a man with committing suicide on national television. According to Dr. Kevorkian, “The voluntary self-elimination of individual and mortally diseased or crippled lives taken collectively can only enhance the preservation of public health and welfare” (Kevorkian). In other words, Kevor...
In 2002, Brent Staples communicated with Jean Baudrillard about the use of his philosophy in The Matrix (1999), a film written and directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Staples wrote, “He [Baudrillard] noted that the film’s “borrowings” from his work “stemmed mostly from misunderstandings” and suggested that no movie could ever do justice to the themes of this book”. In this paper, I will argue that the Wachowski Brothers did not want to “do justice to the themes of this book”; they wanted to adapt Baudrillard’s theories about the blurring of the real and unreal, and the eventual extermination of the real, into a story that provides hope for humans wanting to escape the suffocation of the “hyperreal”. The “hyperreal” was first coined by Baudrillard in his book, Simulacra and Simulations (1983); it is the product of the distortions of the real through endless simulations of it in radio, newspaper, television, and film.
The oldest epic poem of the Anglo-Saxon period is the tale of good and evil. The crusade of heaven and hell, the bloody war that waged between our hero Beowulf and the infamous Grendel and his mother. But there seem to be two sides to this heroic and yet tragic story of these troubled and arrogant souls.
Cummings, e.e. “anyone lived in a pretty how town.” Complete Works. Ed. New York: Harcourt,
“In 1999, Dr. Jack Kevorkian, a Michigan physician known for openly advertising that he would perform assisted suicide despite the fact that it was illegal, was convicted of second-degree murder” (Lee). The fact of the matter is human being...
Smith, Cheryl. "Should Active Euthanasia Be Legalized: Yes." American Bar Association Journal April 1993. Rpt. in CQ Researcher 5.1 (1995): 409.
[4] P. Allmark, "Euthanasia, dying well and the slippery slope," J. Adv. Nurs., vol. 18, pp. 1178-1182, 1993.
Kuhse, Helga. “Euthanasia.” A Companion to Ethics. Ed. Peter Singer. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 1991. 294-302. Print.
McManaman, Doug. A. “Active Euthanasia Is Never Morally Justified.” Assisted Suicide. Ed. Nol Merino.
... to accept that nothing can change the fact that Lucy is dead. What really makes it apparent that Lucy’s parents refuse to let her fade away, is the fact that the stranger is telling the story. The stranger is narrating it as if it was told to him by one of the parents, word by word, to be repeated and spread throughout the town, so in a way Lucy is always kept alive. In words of Wordsworth: