Suicide is getting more and more attention. When people start looking for more information about suicide, you'll be able to meet their needs. This article is a short summary of a lot of information about this topic. Let's start with the fact that euthanasia can be seen on three different levels.
There are three levels to euthanasia that you should be aware of:
- One is a person who is unconscious or has died. In these situations, the patient's family asks the doctor to "pull the plug," or to stop giving the patient artificial life support. Most of the time, the general public doesn't question these cases. It is the act of taking away or not giving something that is needed to keep life going that can't keep going on its own. Here, one's personality is no longer recognizable, and all that is left is the body's shell.
- Another form of euthanasia is giving morphine to hospitalized people with painful diseases like cancer or AIDS in the last stages of their lives.
- The last type of euthanasia involves people who are in good health but are just starting to get sick and want to end their lives. Patients with Alzheimer's and cancer aren't likely to want to know about PAS. This is the most controversial of the three issues about euthanasia.
The word "euthanasia" comes from the Greek words for "good death." It is when another person who is able to end a life does it on purpose at the request of the person who wants to die. Here are some terms you need to know to understand what is going on in PAS.
Passive euthanasia means speeding up a person's death by taking away some kind of help and letting nature take its course. This can mean taking away life-supporting equipment, stopping medical treatment or procedures, stopping food and water intake, which can lead to dehydration or death from starvation, and stopping CPR (Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation). Most of the time, PAS is used to give patients a lot of morphine to stop their pain. Most likely, the pain medicine will make it hard to breathe and cause death sooner than it would have otherwise. This is also done on people who are in a persistent vegetative state or who have brain damage and can't wake up again.
Active euthanasia is when a person's death is caused on purpose by something they do. In 1998, a patient with Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS) and Dr. Jack Kevorkian brought this to the public's attention. His patient was afraid that ALS would cause him to suffer for a long time and wanted to die quickly and without pain. This person died because Dr. Kevorkian injected them with drugs that were illegal. In March 1999, a jury found Kevorkian guilty of second-degree murder, even though he had been charged with first-degree murder.
Physician-assisted suicide is when a doctor gives a dying patient information or the means to kill himself or herself.
Involuntary euthanasia is when a person's life is ended without the person making it clear that they want it to end.
"Patients may want to use PAS for a number of different reasons. Some people are just clinically depressed, which may have been caused by their illness or the way they have dealt with their illness on an emotional and mental level, which has caused them to suffer in ways other than their body. Others live in constant pain because they don't have health insurance or a way to get medicine. This last group would rather die early than leave their loved ones with medical bills. People would rather not lose their independence and money because of a serious disorder or disease like ASL, Huntington's disease, Multiple Sclerosis, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, etc. In some ways, this makes people feel like they have a say in how their lives go.
