Killing and Letting Die

Although the ending result is the same, ethically speaking there is a great difference between killing and letting die. A situation where we can fully understand this is having a terminally ill patient at hospital. There is no hope for the patient to recover, what can only be done is treatment to give the patient more time.

As human beings, we are in no position to decide who gets to live or die. The law establishes that we must do whatever is possible to keep the patient alive, but what if the patient doesn’t want to suffer anymore? Is it really worth living a few more weeks in pain , in a bed? There are different actions which lead to the death of the patient, some might seem more ethically justified than others.

Killing : Killing is an action brought about intended to turning down the life of the patient. This can be done either by commission or omission. Commission is when the patient is given something intentionally to put him down. This could be a lethal injection, or extra dosage of medicine to reduce pain and lifetime. These actions might be better known as Euthanasia . A case referring to these treatments is the following :

“A 30-year-old woman who is terminally ill has launched a campaign to overturn Britain’s euthanasia laws by compelling her doctors to increase her dose of morphine and let her die.

Kelly Taylor lives in constant pain with a congenital heart defect and a spinal disorder. She says she has struggled with her condition all her life and wants release. She has been told she has a year to live but doctors have been unable to control her pain.

“Enough is enough,” she said yesterday. “I don’t want to suffer any more. I’m not depressed – I’ve never been depressed. I am a happy person. But my illness is now at the point where I don’t want to deal with it any more.” ”

We can clearly see that the patient wants to die because she is suffering and life is not worth living with all this pain. Can’t it therefore be justified to satisfy these people without consequences to those responsible?

The other point is omission , this point is when lets say a patient who is terminally ill suffers from a cardiac arrest. The doctors have the obligation to save the patient BUT if the patient has a matter of days maybe weeks left to live, is it worth saving the patients life? Or should we let nature take its course?

These topics should surely be given more interest because people are suffering and death itself is already painful, let alone being kept alive painfully to die. This video might give you a more realistic example of how painful leaving terminally ill patients may be to them , and their family