THE ETHICS OF EUTHANASIA INTRODUCTION Euthanasia is the intentionally acting to end the life of a person for the purpose of relieving pain and suffering. For euthanasia to occur there must be an intention to accelerate someone’s life, the act of purpose has to be to relieve pain and suffering. The term euthanasia is from a Greek word meaning ‘good death’. It differs significantly from other end of life practice such as withdrawing burdensome treatment. Euthanasia involves a deliberate action aimed at intentionally ending a patient’s life (Plunkett, 1995). The intention of helping patient is to relieve burdensome, which does not want to let patient die but causing patent’s death. The bioethics literature distinguishes between four forms of euthanasia: voluntary active euthanasia, voluntary passive euthanasia, non-voluntary active euthanasia and non-voluntary passive euthanasia. Voluntary active euthanasia involves a situation whereby a qualified medical practitioner will, at the request of a competent patient, administer a lethal substance (usually intravenously) to the patient and thereby ends that person’s life. In case of voluntary passive euthanasia, the situation slightly differs in that life sustaining care and treatments (such as mechanical life support, tube feeds, antibiotics etc) maybe either withdrawn or withheld at the request of a competent client. A distinguishing feature of both these positions is their ‘voluntaries’, that is, they involve a situation in which clients freely and autonomously choose death, seek assistance to obtain this death and consent to the procedures needed to achieve death. Non-voluntary (active and passive) euthanasia involves a situation in which the decision to end a patient’s life is made on behalf of the client without his/her consent this is commonly because the patient is unable or incapable for reasons of serious illness or age to competently request assistance to die. Patients who tend to fall into this category are those suffering from severe brain injury, the very young (newborns), the very old and the intellectually disabled (Pollard, 1989). LEGAL PERSPECTIVE In more recent times, euthanasia laws have been passed in the Northern Territory of Australia and the Netherlands.
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