Ethics of Euthanasia: Utilitarianism and Deontology

Euthanasia and Ethics
Name:
Instructor:
Ethics
Date:
Euthanasia is the process of ending one's life through admission or injection of a poisonous substance by another person, at the permission of the former. Euthanasia is as controversial as it sounds, and has continued raising so much ethical dust over the years, with its opponents and proponents locking horns time and again in a never-ending tag of war over its practice. Medically assisted euthanasia is the intentional killing of a patient by the doctor, in most cases due to the request by the individual, to stop one's suffering. It comes along with ethical issues, and tends to threaten even the basic understanding of the sanctity of life, and places both the medical personnel and the law at loggerheads. The hot debate surrounding utilitarianism stems from the fact that it concerns human life, and anything pertaining human life is always a weighty matter. In helping to understand euthanasia, there are a number of ethical dimensions which help in its interpretation. This paper is going to look at controversial topic of voluntary euthanasia under the lens of deontology, virtue ethics, and utilitarianism.
Utilitarianism is within the body of consequentialist philosophical theories, which hold that the greatness of an act is observable from its results. Universal consequentialism, which contains utilitarianism, is usually taken as the most ideal, common philosophical perspective that enables a decision to be made based on rationality and common sense. Utilitarian ethics is based on the aspect of weighing the good against the bad (Chambers, 2005). It is more like cost-benefit analysis aimed at weighing that choice would be more reasonable under the given circumstances. Utilitarianism should result to happiness. Happiness itself means the absence or elimination of pain and grief, and the sufficiency of pleasure. Pain in this context, doesn't only mean physical, but also emotional, psychological torture, such as distress (Telfer, n.d).Therefore, a summative definition of utilitarianism is the use of choices that result to the best possible consequences.
Generally, utilitarianism deems voluntary euthanasia as very right and ethical. There usually comes a time in the life of an individual, especially a patient, when his or her continued survival brings much pain to the person ,and also distress to his or her closest associates ,such as family and friends (Chambers,2005).Distress as earlier noted, is just pain in a different dimension. The other dimension to look at it is considering the amount of resources that everyone puts in place to sustain the individual. Such resources would have otherwise been used to do other things that would bring happiness to everyone, especially so when the patient has little or no hopes of complete recovery (Telfer, n.d). Utilitarianism aims at encouraging actions whose impact will result in joy for many. Euthanasia perfectly fits the bill since it eliminates the pain of the patient. It also saves the patient's friends and family the anguish of having to see him or her suffer from something that might not be curable in any case.
However, utilitarianism has got its own undoing as well. By basing the argument on the perception that the final ...