Life Support Machine Or Euthanasia Philosophy Essay

Visualize an important person you feel affection for… Now, picture yourself in a hospital bed lifeless to the humanity near you not capable to move or show any signs of existence, your personal life restricted by an I.V., a respiratory mechanism called “respirator”, and a feeding hose. In real meaning you are lifeless. Your remains are no longer capable to keep up with the existence; its complete reason at the moment is replaced by a device. You are being set aside and active by a fake machine. At this moment the question take place: Should you be able to live pluged into these machines or should you be permitted to pass away in peace?

Unluckily, you are not capable to reply this subject since your say is restricted to a beep-beep on a heart monitor apparatus. Who after that is going to come to a decision if you will survive unnaturally or die as expected? Who gets to take part in Gods will? If your relatives don’t have your consent on paper in the type of living will, to end life support, after that the physician will formulate the final wish for mutually you and your relatives. Most often in this case, for most people writing a living will is just as simple if not uncomplicated as writing a death will, countless people don’t get the moment to do so.

In most situations the life support system basically extends the fatal agony of a patient by a couple more weeks or months; they don’t do anything to return a patient to a regular functioning individual. With most fatally ill patient’s life support does not extend living, it makes the pain longer, for both the patient and their relatives. What can a person who is only living because of a device from a life support machine can expect from life? The ill individual does not have an opportunity to wake up and be able to live an ordinary life. So how can we live enough to let this uncomplicated action of humankind be in opposition to those rules?

Get Help With Your Essay

If you need assistance with writing your essay, our professional essay writing service is here to help!
Find out more about our Essay Writing Service

Today, everyone sees life support machine as life savers which in numerous situations, they are. They allow citizens to obtain a normal life after either a sickness or an accident. On the other hand, it is not always that way; in most cases when people experience illness, such as cancer or other life frightening diseases and are put on a life support machine so all the organs and parts of their body can work appropriately. If the results of the analysis are fatal and there is no expectation for a regular normal life by unplugging the life support machines will at least let the person die with dignity.

At this point, having compassion and finishing their life serenely can help, while this individual is anguishing. Maintaining somebody on life support is a tight spot that a lot of people have to deal with. While, numerous people have come out of life support, others might not be so fortunate and, who is going to make the choice. The resolution stands in countless factors that comprises but do not restrict to: age, health insurance, one’s mental state and the ability to let one go. If the patient wishes not to be kept alive without certain qualities of life then their decision should be respected.

The choice will be in the hands of the power attorney, yet for individuals who do not have power of an attorney, the relatives should come up mutually and formulate a practical decision, which is not always an easy procedure. Looking every one of those subjects, and taking in reflection will be an easy process for our loved ones. Up front with this choice to removing the plug, age can be an enormous factor. In this case, if it is a young person, the relatives might tend to be tolerant to wait for their recuperation. Nonetheless, facing on the physical condition of an older human being, the family members may not want them to live in a vegetative condition.

In fact, while a slight majority prefers doctors to help them make those difficult decisions, many feel that it is a decision they want to make without the guiding input from doctors other than an explanation of the options. At the end of life, critically ill patients frequently requires surrogates to make their medical decisions for them, who, in absence of advance directive from the patient, must rely on what they believe would have been the patient’s desires. This put enormous emotional burden on surrogates; not only they are losing a loved one; they also may feel burdened by guilt allowing the patient to die.

Life support in on hand seems to be good, because it is allowing the family a little more time with their loved ones and also they will have time to say their last goodbyes before unplugging the machine. For who are expected to make a full recovery and continue with a good quality of life, some people are kept on a life support machine and later recover to be weaned off, some go back to enjoying a decent quality of life. Others have absolutely no quality of life, their vital organs are not functioning, they are fed through feeding tubes, unconscious, bedsores, contractures, and limited brain function.

Health care providers have to argue the subject of euthanasia, a matter that every one of us is supposed to think about it, and ask ourselves before we are place under this condition. What is euthanasia? Euthanasia is not compassion murder. It has extremely nothing to do with killing. On the opposite, euthanasia by meaning just stand for “good quality of death “and in the practical good judgment it means “the person who is ill possess usual death not including or extending their dying course excessively.” This helps the patient to pass away calm, quietly, and with self-respect.

Even though there is no law authorizing euthanasia in the U.S. several doctors finish a fatal patient’s life by controlling a lethal dosage of a medicine that they were administering before. Additionally, when health centers and health care providers recognize that there is slight or no chance for terminal ill patient, they offer fewer than sufficient consideration and care to the patients. The hospital staff does not take good care of patients, leaving them with bedsores and without food for several days, in most cases a patient will eventually die faster.

Euthanasia must be an authorized process by means of various policies. Not everybody should be able to have this process. The primary guideline would be with the purpose of the patient who is passing away from a disease that does not have a treatment. The following rule was supposed to be that there is no expectation of any improvement; essentially a “miracle” would have to occur. And finally the last rule would be that the ill person has intentionally and dynamically asked for the method several times over more an occasion to time. This must not be a practice that is approved right away, it is supposed to be well thought out by the patient and the doctor. If the patient and the doctor agree that there is no more hope for the recovery of his or her patient, than the wish should be granted.

In Canada for example euthanasia is a motive for debate today, by both the community and the politicians, while the government is hesitant to undertaking into ethics and principles. It seems that euthanasia is obtaining extra media exposure. In the case of Sue Rodriguez and Robert Latimer, certainly the subject is complicated to determine, and regardless of little progress, the government has endorse punishment in the Criminal Code to penalize anyone and support this suicide cause.

With no uncertainties, euthanasia is not approved in Canada. A rising amount of citizens are choosing to doctor-assisted suicide. As a consequence of an additional open-minded political ground, more populace is in agreement that several type of euthanasia should be satisfactory in a detailed situation. Politicians, and the courts, argue that the nation is not yet prepared for such an atmosphere. The classification of pro-euthanasia is supported by their equivalent as self-interested; attracting the easy process, impolite of living, and demanding person self-esteem is miscomprehended.

Permitting a patient to pass away, after the patient purposely turned down additional treatment is to recognize their normal independence. This does not expand to negative response of necessary care and does not remove of relieve procedures. In 1991, the BC Royal commission accomplished that “the human being who is passing must have the right to decide the type and instance of death. There is a right to commit a suicide, and a medical doctor must be permitted to help someone who decides to apply that right.

The right to die society in Canada, based in Victoria, insists the right of any full-grown human being who is chronically or fatally ill to decide the time, place, and way of his or her death. Suicide and euthanasia are a reasonable comeback to the declining quality of life, which several people knowledge as they grow older or which they suffer as a consequence of accidents or congenital disabilities. This civilization vigorously lobbies politically and lively euthanasia, and offer therapy to each associate who desires to be familiar with assistance-in-dying.

A living will makes the entire situation virtually non-existent. A living will is the patient written demand not the doctors’ choice, not to be positioned on life-support systems, and this demand should be privileged by the doctor or a health care provider. Immediately as possessions is impartial to individuals named in a persons’ death will, so must their requirements acknowledged in a living will. It will be easier for the relatives, as well for the patient, after facing with the conclusion of pulling the plug or sustain their loved one hooked up on a life support machine.

If a human being has a living will on paper afterward if it is so affirmed, they will not be put on life-support. As an alternative, they will also reside in the hospital or be sent home so that their body will be permitted to take the usual path it has begun. If a life, natural world, spirit, or who-be-it, has determined that it is someone’s “time “then who are we to say that it isn’t? Clearly, we are in neither a divine nor ethical place to create this conclusion.

Living wills assist health personnel and other to come up with the resolution regarding your care and healing, if you ever became seriously ill or unable to speak for yourself. In several situations living wills may turn out to be lawfully and necessary purpose on health care staff. Living wills are careful obvious and persuasive proof of patient first choice for ending life treatment. In most cases, some people does not accept the fact that they are losing someone close, or either they prefer not to think about that this day will eventually come. Although, we should not ignore the possibility of having someone, someday in this awful situation, we should always prepare for the worst, and pray for the best.

As a result, we should not put into practice artificial life -support methods to also avoid or delay the body usual degenerative procedure. As an alternative, we must face and defeat our own doubts and inner argument with death. And one method to do this is by writing a living will. When facing any situation like this one, we will probably know what to do, and this is one way to prepare ourselves for the worst time of our lives, preparing to say our last good bye.

Some people want their loved ones remain for years in this condition, but it is a very personal decision which each person should think about and makes their wishes known long before. Everyday let your loved ones know they are love, that way, if faced with this situation, it won’t be an agonizing decision based on guilt or wanting more time. We should spend more time with the ones we love and care, because once they are gone there is no time to repair anything, just keep the memories and pain.

Mr. Ronald Rosales says: “My father has been on life-support system for more than nine months, and every time I go to the hospital to see him, it breaks my heart”. He adds, “I cannot stop thinking about the time we used to go out and have fun, my father was a very healthy man when he was younger, he was a engineer and a math teacher, he was so smart, and very well known by the community of El Salvador. Today, he spends all day and night on a hospital bed without saying a word to me, or his grandchildren, and it is the most heartbreaking situation for our family”.

“In the beginning it was harder, because the idea of letting my father goes, but times heal everything and today my family and I, even my sister and brothers got used to the idea of letting him go. In another hand, it will be better for him, for his body and soul, we are not sure if he can feel any pain or anything, but the bed sores, and all those tubes plugged into him tells a lot, it also tell us that he suffered enough and now he needs to rest in peace”, Said Mr. Ronald Rosales.

In the beginning the medication is the only objective for a medical doctor to maintain life. The death of a patient became a symbol of physician’s weaknesses; the extending of life is symbol of his or her capability. While, this viewpoint still persist innovative and unpredictable methods were put into practice to the era in the 1960s. For the period of this experiment, new machinery initiate to manufacture equipment such as lung and heart apparatus skilled of enhancing a more regular body task for an extended moment. This equipment, meant to make a provisional use, until the regular organ function is re-established and the patient may possibly go back to a normal life. Unfortunately the device created two concerns.

Initially, since extending existence turn out to be an end in itself; some doctors engaged this equipment, yet in circumstances even when no expectation of the person was ever to come back to a significant life. Next, yet those doctors who stay away from unnecessary utilization of the equipment stated that an urgent situation is mandatory for the instant use of such equipment as the hospital staffs were not capable to decide if it was possible for a patient to return to a meaningful life. Once the instance demonstrate the patient would never improve and go back to their normal life, the equipment, by now in use, was very hard to cut off.

In 1976 the Karen Quinlan case brought all the media attention to the call for living wills. Karen Quinlan, was a very young female whose brain had been brutally wounded, leading her into a coma. She had been sustaining on an artificial ventilator for one year. And her parents decided to ask a judge of a New Jersey court to let them unplug her respiratory device. And the New Jersey Supreme Court came up with the conclusion that Karen Quinlan was not capable to understand her condition or contain an influence in the resolution. The court permitted her parents, as her closest living relatives, to put together the resolution for her. Consequently initiate the development of the new official conception of the right of self-determination in health care.

Still, until now, the majority of the population attempt to stay away from the truth that we are going to die some day, it is a predictable truth and we have to make the arrangements for the prospect consistently. For that reason, every one of us must sincerely think about writing a living will. By writing a living will, we will reduce equally the economic and the psychological ache and will minimize the pain that mutually you and your relatives may come across. In addition, you will guarantee that you and not your physician will make the most significant choice of your life, whether or not to die. Unhappily, passing away is an element of life and just as we struggle to live with principles, we should also struggle to die with dignity.