Voluntary Assisted Euthanasia

Voluntary/Assisted Euthanasia
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Medically assisted euthanasia is the intentional killing of a patient by the doctor, in most due to the request by the individual, to stop one’s suffering. Euthanasia has become quite a hot and controversial topic in the current medical realms, as it essentially opens the doors to uncharted territory. It comes along with ethical issues, and tends to threaten even the basic interpretation of sanctity of life, and places both the medical personnel and the law at loggerheads. All this, is with the agitation of the patient at the centre of it all. As a nurse, euthanasia also touches on some parts of the profession. The discussion between Dax and Cowart and Robert Burt in Confronting Death: Who Chooses? Who Controls? Clearly highlights this issue.
The ethical issues brought about by euthanasia, is that it is the fundamental right of every person to be entitled to his or her own decision. This is one of the few rights that cannot be taken away from a person, even by the state. It is therefore supposed to be respected at any one time, since it is a personal decision (NHS, 2015).So if a patient asks for euthanasia, it is a personal request that need to be obeyed by the respective doctors in charge.
The other ethical argument in support of euthanasia is that life is supposed to be something beautiful, something worth enjoying at any one time. It is therefore of no reason and no value whatsoever, for a person to live in deplorable, substandard conditions, especially one that is compounded by unbearable, continuous pain. The argument therefore shifts from the basic point of having the life itself, to the quality of life (Marker, 2014).
Taking from the example of Dax, he suffered multiple loses, that made him contemplate and cry out for assisted euthanasia. He got involved in a fire accident that cost the life of his father, and severe burns to his body, much to the extent that he was partly disabled. The amount of emotional pain and torture that he went through as a result of the loss of the dad, and the subsequent loss of his able-bodied state, made him to repeatedly urge his doctor to apply assisted euthanasia. This was compounded by the extreme pain that he had to endure for an entire year, as he underwent therapy (Burt, 1998).
In his debate with Burt, he tries justifying his famous requests to undergo euthanasia, as he uses every ethical and legal ounce of his competence and knowledge, to defend his earlier stand. Just as earlier noted, Dax bases his argumen...