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This is a piece on Euthanasia that I did for a friend.  It is only an excerpt.  Please do not try to use for your own work.  Plagiarism is a crime.

Euthanasia The Painless, Peaceful Death

The most important decision an individual can make is the choice of taking his or her life. If someone is terminally ill, all medical treatment has been exhausted, and the pain and suffering is unbearable, then euthanasia may be the answer to ending all pain and suffering. Euthanasia is known as a mercy killing. Euthanasia is a painless, peaceful death.

Euthanasia, derived from the ancient Greek words "eu" and "thanatos", means a good death. The word has come to mean the bringing of a gentle and easy death. There are two types of euthanasia, passive and active. Passive euthanasia is deliberately withholding or withdrawing medical treatment, which would help the patient to live longer, so the patient’s death will take place sooner. Active euthanasia is intervention by a doctor to end life. The individual is killed by the injection of an overdose of medication. The medical association and United States Courts have made this distinction (Smith, Wesley).

The questions of euthanasia have become an issue for society because it involves assisted suicide. The affects of euthanasia involve the individual, his or her family and now society. The choices individuals make can effect not only themselves but can provide society with questions that have no right or wrong answers.

The justice system is able to execute a criminal by means of lethal injection, while patients are dying slowly with pain and suffering from an incurable disease and cannot choose his or her death without affecting society. There seems to be a double standard within our society between murder and suicide. The both end with the same result, death. The justice system is backed by society because of the crime the criminal commits. The criminal kills someone that has not chosen to die and the criminal is put to death. Terminally ill patients are lodging in hospitals daily and are faced with pain that cannot be helped by medicines. Putting these people to death to end their pain and suffering is considered a crime and the justice system does nothing to help these people. Bills and laws can be passed for the death penalty for criminals, but the justice system refuses to pass laws or bills for a terminally ill person on his or her last dying days.

"Technology tried an antiquated medical and legal ethic that demands keeping a patient alive at all cost is too often the cause of suffering and loss of dignity in an age which science has the means to keep the body functioning in the absence of all recognizable sign of human life. Countless individuals have spent their last days, often in great pain, confined to hospital beds, where they awaited the death that was only delayed by the use of expensive machinery. Euthanasia is nothing more than an individual’s right to determine the minimal quality of life and human dignity necessary to make his or her life worth living" (Marvin Kohl, 357).

Not so many years ago, the penal code of the state of New York specified that any person guilty of an attempt upon his or her life was guilty of a felony, punishable by fines or imprisonment. Therefore, suicide is a crime within one society. The arguments against suicide are strong because society made comments such as: suicide is cowardly; suicide is unnatural; suicide is an insult to human dignity; suicide is cruel to family and friends; suicide is a violation of our duty to God. Some people are led to believe this, while others tend to disagree. "Media polls regularly record huge majorities of people who support legalizing voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill. In October 1997, out of nearly 3,000 people who took part in a Sun Newspaper telephone opinion poll, an amazing 97 percent said terminally ill people should have the right to die with dignity" (Humphry, Derek).

The insult to human dignity is not only suicide, but to that terminally ill person lying in the hospital. There is no dignity when a person’s life exists only to feel pain while having to suffer. What dignity is it to lay in a bed, not being able to help yourself, always being taken care of, not being able to do anything for yourself? Above all, everyday is filled with pain and suffering. There is no human dignity when an individual has to stand at the bedside of a loved one and watch their life slowly deteriorate. The insult to human dignity is the individual that chooses to let this pain and suffering continue, knowing that there is no cure or help for that terminally ill person in need.

God is the creator of all things and we are created out of God’s image. God gives us life and removes life because it is his right. If this is true, then suicide and euthanasia is wrong. How can technology, through medicine and machinery, prolong life and keep God from taking lives? We are still denying God of his right to take life. In the Holy Bible it states, "Thou shalt not kill", yet we justify killing to fit our needs. Society uses the eye for an eye as its basis for the justice system. However, society sees assisted suicide as evil and cruel.

Doctors’ ethics are always in question because they are expected to preserve life and make the ill recover from their sicknesses. The doctors may have their own set of ethics, but the law sees it differently. "Our laws forbid a physician to treat anyone without that person’s consent, except in an emergency situation. Since a patient has the right to refuse any treatment and thereby chooses death, the individual already has the right to die. This right to die has existed throughout our nation’s history" (Asimov, Isaac).

Physicians are always being attacked by the legal system. So many of them may say one thing, but believe something different. Some doctors may see euthanasia as a painless death, but will not admit to it because of the norm within our society.

Doctors today are trained in many different specialties and not so much on pain relief. Pain medicine can cause patients to be overwhelmed by side effects or can cause drug addictions. Pain control is a hard task because some doctors are not aware of new technology and do not receive sufficient training in pain control. The doctor may not know exactly how much pain a patient might be feeling. In some cases, the pain is treated improperly, which could result in a fatal mistake and the hospital and doctor being sued.

Doctor Joseph J. Newschate, an anesthesiologist in Long Island, New York states, "It is my profound opinion that life ends the moment a person with an incurable disease loses the will to live. An extra week, a day, an hour, means only unnecessary suffering, lengthened pain, and prolonged death. Promote health and happiness, not pain and suffering." He adds, "Assisted self-termination should be made available to any incurable who wants it" (New York Doctor, 1990). No decent human being would allow an animal to suffer without putting it out of its misery. It is only to human beings that human beings are so cruel as to allow them to live with pain and suffering, in hopelessness, with a living death. Doctor Jack Kevorkian (Doctor Death) helped a woman with an incurable disease commit suicide. He has put a new focus on death. Jack Kevorkian has pushed abortion aside as a major social issue in America by shocking everyone in America with an act of euthanasia.

In 1961, a law permitted any individual who found life intolerable to take his or her own life, but that decision involves only that person. In 1969, a bill was presented to the House of Lords (The Voluntary Euthanasia Bill of 1969). It states that, "no individual should be denied the right to release themselves from the pain and distress of an incurable disease because every individual has that right" (Summerskill, 204).