Euthanasia

Euthanasia and Physician Assist in Dying

I am going to start my reflection with mentioning two important points came to me when we discussed these topics the first time in class. First, it is very hard to imagine myself or someone I love in such situations which makes it difficult to reach to a solution or conclusion. In addition, I think the power of such topic that it is very controversial because it deals with pain, suicide, death, and helping someone with their decision to die. So, no matter how hard people try, a one conclusion won’t be reached, and no-one will have a complete agreement with either direction. I know this is obvious, however; when it comes to healthcare, I always think there should be clear solutions to every problem to serve the maximum happiness for patients and healthcare providers. However, this is not true even though we have the best technologies compare to any era. Technology has helped a lot to improve in delivering healthcare, but when it comes to the end of life stage, technology has no role in deciding weather to die or not.

I was a part of Con Euthanasia and I still do agree with the conclusion we reached after the debate. My team and I concluded that euthanasia should not be legalized as it is in conflict with healthcare providers obligation of do-no-harm, the total suffering definition of euthanasia is not precise with every single patients as suffering is completely different among humans (could be financially, socially, health and so on), we do not know the entire story behind the patient’s decision to euthanize and there might be other ways we still can help them. Nowadays, palliative care and hospice have become a major part of healthcare and patients from any stage could be involved under such care that might lead them to alter their decisions along the way. With the presence of this field, I do not think euthanasia should be legalized as palliative care will try to help the patients and the family to go through this stage of suffering (due to terminal illness, developed diseases). Also, this will help healthcare providers (especially doctors) of not making a hard decision of prescribing and giving a medication to help patient die.

Moreover, I think physician assist in dying also like euthanasia and I would not agree with it for the same reasons. My grandfather was once places in palliative care before he passed away four years ago. He was completely ill and cannot live a second without machines. As he was going through this, and we all as a family, not once he mentioned he want to die, or any family member recommend we put him into death peacefully instead of the pain he was having at that time. A few months later, he passed away because not even the machines or doctor were able to help. Death is an end of our life and it will come to us sooner or later, however, if we decide to take our own life or the life of loved-one earlier, I think this is in no difference with committing suicide. As a believer, the life we were given is not in our hands and we cannot decide such huge decision to take it away from ourselves because of illness or pain. I think this pain and suffer is part of life and we must deal with it (and so our loved ones and family) as we go through those stages.

One last thing, I also believer there is solution to any problem or issue in this world, and if people around me and I do not know the solution of X-problem, someone else might know (in healthcare, there might be a doctor in different part of the world who knows a treatment for a disease that you do not know, or something new might be developed and change my end-of-life stage and I recover).

Currently, we live in a pandemic of the spread of COVID- 19, and I do not think patients can choose to die if they have this virus and any other health issues that put them in a lot of pain and suffer as there is no treatment yet to this virus, but a lot of trials have been going through study so far. So, if a patient decides to die, and tomorrow a treatment was discovered, I think the family of that person will regret the decision of the patient (or if they helped taking that decision). 

In conclusion, I do not agree with euthanasia and physician assist in dying as I mentioned above. Again, it is very hard to decide and reach to this conclusion if I am out of the circle, however, this is what I believe in and I had an experience once with my grandfather, and I think I would do the same always.