A Comparative Analysis of Ethical Positions on Euthanasia

This report examines the ethical positions surrounding euthanasia, a topic of significant debate in healthcare and society. The author explores the perspectives of two individuals, one representing a humanitarian viewpoint and the other a medical perspective, on the complex issue of medical termination of life for terminally ill patients. The humanitarian viewpoint emphasizes the intrinsic value of human life, the importance of personal dignity, and the potential societal impact of euthanasia. It raises questions about the morality of ending a life, the role of faith, and the potential for alternative treatments. Conversely, the medical perspective, while acknowledging the gravity of ending a life, considers the role of euthanasia in alleviating suffering when pain is unbearable and other options have been exhausted. The medical perspective also considers the importance of the patient's autonomy and the potential for assisted dying in cases of incurable and painful conditions. The report delves into the ethical implications of each position, including the concepts of personal dignity, the Doctrine of Double Effect, and the potential impact on society. It highlights the dilemmas faced by both humanitarians and medical professionals when dealing with end-of-life decisions.

Running Head: ETHICAL POSITION
ETHICAL POSITION
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1ETHICAL POSITION
An ethical position can be called the ethical school, towards which a candidate shows
inclination. Their abilities of logic and reasoning understand and even supports a certain kind
of issue or behavior. An ethical position is the frame of mind that is retained by the person
and that allows him to justify his or her thought about the same, but it must be kept in mind
that ethical position s about any subject differs from person to person. A coin has two sides
and every story has two sides to it, it is a basic human value that there will always be
differences when it comes to people’s perspectives. Through this report, two ethical positions
will be taken into consideration, belonging to two different people from different streams
about a certain question that has tickled ethical reasoning of people for a long time, this take
will be about euthanasia, and if it should be made legal.
Humans are amalgamations of various ideas. These ideas are deep rooted because of
their culture, upbringing and the education they decided to pursue. They might have
perspectives that maybe conflicting with the general state of mind of people or they might
have ideas in sync with a particular group. People are inherently different and diverse and it
is impossible for everyone to share similar ethical standpoints all the time. This is why so
much deliberation is required when it comes to ethical questions that are raised for the benefit
of humanity as a whole all the while making sure that the ethical questions that counter the
argument can be wholly satisfied.
Euthanasia has raised similar ethical questions. Euthanasia is the term that has been
coined for the medical termination of a sick person’s life because he or she is diagnosed and
suffering from a terminal illness and the condition is incurable or in other words, death seems
like a more feasible option than living a life of insurmountable pain. This term is derived for
the Greek word Euthanatos, which is literally translated to easy death. This kind of death is
also applicable for people who are extremely willing to end their lives. This has been
called assisted suicide by many. There have been cases in which the person is too unwell to

2ETHICAL POSITION
even take the decision, in that case the decision is taken by the members of the family the
person belongs to. This naturally has countless ethical implications and raises ethical
questions that demand an ethical understanding of the situation.
Two perspectives will be taken for arguing and presenting this ethical dilemma, the
first being the humanitarian perspective and the second being the medical perspective. The
humanitarian perspective is chosen because of the ability of a humanitarian to raise questions
like, in a moment of pain, the need to die is an escape mechanism while there is more to this
life than the pain, so is dying really an option for people willing to do away with physical
pain? When there is life, there is hope is death actually the last resort? However, the medical
perspective, by a person belonging to that line, is that most kinds of illnesses, have painkillers
and methods that can help minimize the pain or help that person live a life that will be better
in better eventually or proper till the person normally dies, but there will always be cases
when the patient is under a lot of pressure and pain that cannot be medically reduced or there
are cases when death is certain and painful.
The humanitarian perspective offers that humans, are made in the likeness of god or
any higher power that is assumed to be the creator of humanity. They have an intrinsic value
given the fact that humans have so much to offer. They are meant to die of natural; causes or
by the intervention of faith, like an accident or a fatal illness. All humans work under
circumstances that decide if they are to survive or die. Personal dignity is a big question that
is taken into consideration during all kinds of arguments that spring into form to debate out
Euthanasia. Taking the decision for Euthanasia is considered equal to giving up on moral
dignity, the same kind of argument that is utilized for suicide (Carrick, 2012). It is considered
as a decision to end their lives and that is considered as cowardice or people backing out from
what has been planned for them, that is morally irresponsible and looked down upon, given
that people are taught all their lives that pain and illness is a part of humanity and one must

3ETHICAL POSITION
counter it head on and never back out until it is won over. Committing euthanasia is often
looked down upon by humanitarian as an act as base as homicide or even character
assassination given one kills the dignity of a person and allows him to go forward with a
decision that is not morally acceptable.
Euthanasia is soften considered a fundamental error. The judgment that considers it as
an option is one that somehow undervalues the worth of the person. The ethics that are
related to Euthanasia are those of proportionalism and consequentialism along with dualistic
anthropology (Mappis & Zembaty, 1981. These proponents claim that humanity’s dignity
allows them to make decisions for themselves and follow through and any kind of decision
they make is to be respected because they are free to make decisions for themselves but it has
to be considered that humanity is tangled with other people and morals are more than just
personal. The body is a separate entity that is distinct from dignity because it has experiences
of its own that are beyond human control. It is an instrument for the person and not of the
person. Life is worth living but one cannot do that without the body and they are convinced
that since the body is down and unwilling, the psychology changes to that of unwillingness to
go forward with life an end it because the body does not allow it. One is a consciously
experiencing subject. Id the body becomes a burden they can do away with it. However,
humans fail to understand that if the body is done away with, the conscious mind does not
remain. Burden is of various kinds, the question lies that if the human conscious mind is
willing to combat all kinds of burden head on, why not the bodily burden.
From the humanitarian perspective Euthanasia is something that will affect the entire
society as a whole, in this tangled web of relationships, is as person actually free to take a
decision that will have a collective impact. A person is not alone unless people knows he is
and when he or she is, what happens to the memories he leaves behind and the burden he
leaves back for people to take care of? A lot of questions are raised from a humanitarian

4ETHICAL POSITION
perspective. Is killing anybody ever right no matter what the circumstances were? Is death the
best option when life is so precious and beautiful? Euthanasia is rarely justified.
Euthanasia is carried out by killing the person either by a lethal injection or by
depriving the person from whatever is keeping the person alive, like failing to keep their
feeding tube going or turning off life support. Both can be called or deemed murder which
has been agreed to by the person or the family members who are allowing a life to end
because of various reasons. Euthanasia often occurs because the patient refuses to go through
a far more burdensome medical process. Patients often refuse further process because they do
not want to bear the burden of further medical process that will require a lot of monetary
contribution and can be very tricky or has very little survival rate. Terminally ill people often
refuse further treatment because they know that despite further help, they may still not have a
chance against the illness and they are way too much in pain to take any more. Euthanasia in
that case is suicide from a humanitarian perspective because the psychology is similar to that
of suicide victims where they refuse help because they are convinced that they cannot afford
it or it is a lot of effort and they refuse to spend any further resource trying to control it.
Euthanasia is often considered as the relief for pain but is death relief, it is actually pain
stopping forever as presented in the Doctrine of Double Effect (Vaughn, 2015). The pain
however is distributed to the people who survive the dead and mourn them, they suffer from
the pain of loss and often from guilt, as psychologists put it, they feel like they have taken the
decision to kill a persona and they have not done enough to make sure that the person
survives any further. Often euthanasia is called mercy killing where death is mercy as people
want to not take pain anymore.
However, from a medical perspective of a doctor who admit that euthanasia is a rather
gruesome process given their jobs are top save lives and not end them, they still believe that
euthanasia have an enormous importance in today’s world. With the advancement of medical

5ETHICAL POSITION
science coupled with technology, they know that any disease has countless options that can
be taken by a person to help himself or herself or a loved one in danger. The options are
always provided to them by hospitals who are both capitalist as well as humanitarian agencies
who are trying to ease pain and help the comfort of the patients admitted there yet they are
willing to provide them all kinds of facilities that might be available for them given the fact
that want to be profitable organizations as well. Often people who are declared dead can be
kept on life support for however long it is required but they will never come back again
unless there is some chance, which in many cases, is not.
The doctor gets candid when it come to their thoughts about euthanasia, their life in
the medical world has been riddled with death and loss that are not planned and because of
terminal illnesses that could not be healed. They saw cases in the ICU that have not been easy
on their eyes and spirit. After countless deaths of patients under them, they have felt like they
have seen enough and had often felt like quitting, but it is true that it is a part of their job.
They have come to accept like the scientific community as that the physical self of the body
cane be limiting and they can break down often and that death does not take away the legacy
of a person. Euthanasia has been embraced by them, as they scientific pioneers of
humanitarian duties, they know that death seems a better option for countless people to whom
suffering is causing further damage (Materstvedt, 2003). They have seen families that have
been torn apart while taking these decisions but they have also seen families being unable to
take their loved one is pain. They voluntarily come up with ideas of euthanasia to relieve the
suffering of these people. The doctors are sure that they maintain the rituals that help them
ascertain if the case is aligned towards the requirements for euthanasia. They refuse to
euthanize people who have a large chance of survival even if their life might be very difficult
later. They also make sure that the person who is asking for a euthanasia goes through a
psychological examination to make sure that the decision taken is well thought of and the

6ETHICAL POSITION
implications are discussed and agreed to. The medical viewpoint of humanitarian euthanasia
is that of help.
Mortality in the medical field is the ultimate fate of humanity and they wholly accept
that people should lead their best lives. Quality of life in the medical field is supreme and the
medical field tries their hardest to minimize their pain. Terminally ill people have come up
with requests that require euthanasia because they refuse to take the pain any longer and they
refuse to live their life terminally ill. People have embraced the concept of living till you are
fit and healthy and mere survival is not considered as living any longer. These terminally ill
people consist of people who have difficulty breathing, like the people who have lung cancer
and suffer from the accumulation of fluid within their lungs and they have to undergo painful
extraction almost every day. Even assisted breathing devices are becoming burdensome for
them. There are people who have been rendered completely immobile and people who cannot
eat any longer, there are people who vomit constantly or suffer pain in parts of their body that
feels worse than death. To them living becomes a burden as they are jot built to accept a life
that is incomplete.
The above situations is when the humanitarian ‘dignity’ and morals come in. These
people feel like being dependent on other people is a blow to their dignity or they feel like
depending upon others is making them lose control of their own lives. People who have been
self-dependent have morals like, a life is not worth living if you cannot fend for yourself as
per utilitarian ethics (Hawley, 2007). Is it really humanitarian if one is forced to live on other
people’s terms? The medical field believed that each adult has a free will and they do not
consider suicide as an act of cowardice. They have come across people who have attempted
suicide and they pity them because they are aware of how, much pain they must have been
through to have attempted suicide because they could not share the pain with others and they
decide to do something in complete secrecy. Euthanasia on the other hand is legally

7ETHICAL POSITION
deliberated upon along with medical cross checking that ensures that the case is legitimate
and the pain cannot be reduced. It is also made sure that the people connected to that person
agrees to the same and that he does not leave behind a mess that will be too heavy to clean.
Thus we see that Euthanasia is well thought out process that requires maximum effort to
dissuade the person involved to check if his need to die is real. Life is something that’s is not
our choice, but death is. Humans, deserve to do something for themselves and if death is that
something so be it.
The debate of Euthanasia will naturally raise a lot of questions and persist in various
places given that ethics are something that have evolved over the years and they condemn in
at times. Humanity is a gift and a chance to do something better, and humans are a social
creature, they are not just limited by their wants and needs, they are much more than that but
it is also true that science knows that humanity is more than just an element in a web, it is a
separate entity than can think for itself. Perspectives will always differ but it is up to us to
decide, if a person really needs to live through the pain towards nothingness or die a man,
who had his life and now is ready to cross the line.

8ETHICAL POSITION
References
Carrick, P. (2012). Medical ethics in antiquity: philosophical perspectives on abortion and
euthanasia (Vol. 18). Springer Science & Business Media.
Hawley, G. (2007). Ethics in clinical practice: an inter-professional approach. Routledge.
Mappes, T. A., & Zembaty, J. S. (1981). Biomedical ethics (p. 54). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Materstvedt, L. J., Clark, D., Ellershaw, J., Førde, R., Gravgaard, A. M. B., Müller-Busch, H.
C., ... & Rapin, C. H. (2003). Euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide: a view from
an EAPC Ethics Task Force. Palliative Medicine, 17(2), 97-101.
Vaughn, L. (2015). Doing ethics: Moral reasoning and contemporary issues. WW Norton &
Company.