Brent+On+Kevorkian+and+Euthanasia

Issues of life and death will continue to be questioned based on their moral and ethical natures. To this issue, there are two clear-cut and opposing forces; from the Catholic Church on one side, to Doctor Kevorkian and several terminally ill patients who feel their lives have a quality of being less-than-normal.

In the Sanpedro case, he should have been given the ability to have committed suicide via lethal injection initially when he wished to do so. Waiting over thirty years is over kill and he deserves to die with his dignity intact. Though some may say that this decrease in time to completely come around to the idea may lead to an increase in unnecessary suicides, it is ultimately up to the patient to decide whatever future he wishes to have.

I am not stating that people with disabilities hold a less-than-normal existence, that is completely untrue. Sometimes, when the "worst case possible" happens, we look at the good of its happening and grow as people. As in the case of Alison Davis, the spinal bifida patient who would have been "murdered" at birth if her mother aborted her fetus due to her illness. She is an active voice against euthanasia for it "takes away life that shouldn't be gone".

Though, not everybody shares that opinion.One of the documents we read, the Chris Hill suicide note, it is apparent how some people just won't get out of their "funk". They'll constantly be thinking about how their lives were and could have been. How, now... Their lives have been changed and they fail to see the good brought out of it.For these people, death is their only relief. I feel, if it is their wish, respect it.But this is what many fail to do in hospitals today.

Doctor Jack Kevorkian is correct in critiquing the modern practice of physician-assisted suicide, or lack thereof. I strongly believe that if a doctor practices euthanasia but doesn’t publicly defend it, he should be imprisoned for 1st degree murder with malice aforethought. For, if he sees the practice as immoral, he obviously has some sort of “malice” towards the patient in order to “kill” him. Why else would he be practicing it? If not, he should be a proponent for “dying with dignity”, not hide in the day of light when he is begged to give his opinion over euthanasia. If a person isn’t willing to fight for their beliefs, what are they willing to fight for?This isn’t an issue of ethics, well, for the most part; the patient believes in the practice, the doctors follow through with it, and the Hippocratic Oath supports its action. The only reason it isn’t passed is due to Fundamentalist Catholics and physicians too feeble to fight for it. But; the Catholic “vote” should be extinguished for they should be in opposition to the whole practice of medicine for, anything prolonging life, just like ending it, is “Against God’s Plan.” The thing I fail to comprehend is the fact that they see medical care as an example of human capacity and capability but fail to see euthanasia under a similar light. Being able to guide a person from life to death with as minimal pain as possible is just as imperative as insuring they travel through live with just as little pain.

Euthanasia, hopefully, will develop and will be expressed as a good rather than an evil by physicians who gain enough courage to put their patients before their titles as Dr. Kevorkian has done. I commend “Doctor Death” for his actions in hopes that sometime in my lifetime it will be legalized for, if I become bed-ridden and incapable of controlling my Somatic Nervous System, I would love to take a cocktail. “One short sleep past, we wake eternally, And Death shall be no more ; Death, thou shalt die.”