Euthanasia Term Paper Essays - Euthanasia, Medical Ethics

Euthanasia Term Paper A considerable size of society is in favor of Euthanasia mostly because they feel that as a democratic country, we as free individuals, have the right to decide for ourselves whether or not it is our right to determine when to terminate someone's life. The stronger and more widely held opinion is against Euthanasia primarily because society feels that it is god's task to determine when one of his creations time has come, and we as human beings are in no position to behave as god and end someone's life. When humans take it upon themselves to shorten their lives or to have others to do it for them by withdrawing life-sustaining apparatus, they play god. They usurp the divine function, and interfere with the divine plan. Euthanasia is the practice of painlessly putting to death persons who have incurable , painful, or distressing diseases or handicaps. It come from the Greek words for 'good' and 'death', and is commonly called mercy killing. Voluntary euthanasia may occur when incurably ill persons ask their physician, friend or relative , to put them to death. The patients or their relatives may ask a doctor to withhold treatment and let them die. Many critics of the medical profession contend that too often doctors play god on operating tables and in recovery rooms. They argue that no doctor should be allowed to decide who lives and who dies. The issue of euthanasia is having a tremendous impact on medicine in the United States today. It was only in the nineteenth century that the word came to be used in the sense of speeding up the process of dying and the destruction of so-called useless lives. Today it is defined as the deliberate ending of life of a person suffering from an incurable disease. A distinction is made between positive, or active, and negative, or passive, euthanasia. Positive euthanasia is the deliberate ending of life; an action taken to cause death in a person. Negative euthanasia is defined as the withholding of life preserving procedures and treatments that would prolong the life of one who is incurably and terminally ill and couldn't survive without them. The word euthanasia becomes a respectable part of our vocabulary in a subtle way, via the phrase ' death with dignity'. Tolerance of euthanasia is not limited to our own country. A court case in South Africa, s. v. Hatmann (1975), illustrates this quite well. A medical practitioner, seeing his eighty-seven year old father suffering from terminal cancer of the prostate, injected an overdose of Morphine and Thiopental, causing his father's death within seconds. The court charged the practitioner as guilty of murder because 'the law is clear that it nonetheless constitutes the crime of murder, even if all that an accused had done is to hasten the death of a human being who was due to die in any event'. In spite of this charge, the court simply imposed a nominal sentence; that is, imprisonment until the rising of the court. (Friedman 246) Once any group of human beings is considered unworthy of living, what is to stop our society from extending this cruelty to other groups? If the mongoloid is to be deprived of his right to life, what of the blind and deaf? and What about of the cripple, the retarded, and the senile? Courts and moral philosophers alike have long accepted the proposition that people have a right to refuse medical treatment they find painful or difficult to bear, even if that refusal means certain death. But an appellate court in California has gone one controversial step further. (Walter 176) It ruled that Elizabeth Bouvia, a cerebral palsy victim, had an absolute right to refuse a life-sustaining feeding tube as part of her privacy rights under the US and California constitutions. This was the nation's most sweeping decision in perhaps the most controversial realm of the rights explosion: the right to die... As individuals and as a society, we have the positive obligation to protect life. The second precept is that we have the negative obligation not to destroy or injure human life directly, especially the life of the innocent and invulnerable. It has been reasoned that the protection of innocent life- and therefore, opposition to abortion, murder, suicide, and euthanasia- pertains to the common good of society. Among the potential effects of a legalised practice of euthanasia are the following: "Reduced pressure to improve curative or symptomatic treatment". If euthanasia had been legal 40 years ago, it is quite possible

The Prince of Tides-Compare novel to film essays

The Prince of Tides-Compare novel to film essays The process of transforming this novel into a film takes away a tremendous amount from the original story. This is certainly the case with The Prince of Tides. Pat Conroy develops each character and brings to life each member and associate of the Wingo Family. I was disappointed with many of the characters in the film. In the novel many of the characters had a huge role in developing the personality of Tom Wingo, whereas in the film these character were either excluded or merely mentioned as a quick reference or a mere memory. The novel focuses on the dysfunctional relationship between the members of the Wingo Family and the affects of those relationships in the adult lives of those family members. Tom Wingo takes a trip to New York City, from his home in Colleton South Carolina, to visit his sister Savannah Wingo who has attempted suicide for the second time. Also to assist her Doctor with information about her past that will possibly lead to the suppressed memories that has brought her to this point. It is during these sessions that Tom reflects with unabridged detail on his childhood from birth to present date. These recollections, in my opinion, are the most captivating part of the story that was extracted from the film. For example: The story of the birth of the Wingo twins. During a hurricane, Amos Wingo and his servant Sarah Jenkins sought shelter and helped deliver his grandchildren Tom and Savannah, and save them and their mother Lila from certain death. This was a brilliantly poetic way to bri ng to light the turmoil that will surround the lives of Tom and Savannah. This type of dialogue allows the reader to connect emotionally with each character and was unfortunately edited from the film. The two most important events, which I feel had the biggest impact on the lives of Tom and Savannah, were also severely modified in the film. The rape of Tom, Savannah, and their mother Lila was a big pa ...

To what extent does the United Kingdom have a 2 party system Essay

To what extent does the United Kingdom have a 2 party system - Essay Example The description of British Government so far given has required frequent mention of political parties. The nearest approach to official recognition is in the rules for the formation of Committees of the House of Commons. Yet without them the whole nature of the Constitution would be changed and many of its conventions would become unworkable. The relations of Parliament to the Government on the one hand, and to the people on the other, are governed by the party system (Field, 1963). The essence of this system is that people who find themselves in agreement on major matters of policy should unite in organized bodies to secure the return to Parliament, and to other elected assemblies, of Members who will work for an agreed policy. Thus the party system plays a very important role in the political system of United Kingdom. A political party is more or well organized group of citizens who act together as a political unit. They share or profess to share the same opinions on public queuing and by exercising their voting power towards a common end, seek to obtain control of the Government. In a democratic form of government there might be several parties. And they work through their own ideologies. But in the case study of United Kingdom we find two major parties working and dominating the state politics. This influence or domination is called in terms of Political Science a "two party system". There may existence more parties known as minor parties who are always under the control of the major parties and this absolute domination paves the way of Dictatorship in the politics of UK. Although democracy prevails in UK but practice is not absolute because of "two party system" that is a time demand for amendment. And this is a severe fault of democracy, however this defect of democracy as well as British gov t. is aimed to evaluate in the thesis. 2. BI-PARTY SYSTEM BI-party system does not mean that a particular country has only two parties and there is no third party in it. It means there are only two major parties and the rest of the parties are less important. For example, there are more than two parties in England, viz.. Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Party, Fascist and Communist Party. But in politics, only two parties are important, i.e., the Conservative and the Labour Party. Sometimes the Conservative Party and at other times the Labour Party forms the Government. No seat has been obtained by the communist and the Fascist Party. In the House of Commons, the Liberal Party has only a few seats. Similarly in the U. S. A. though there are, many parties like the Communist Party, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, yet only Republican and Democratic Par-ties are important and they form the Government. The Communist Party has no importance in the politics, thus, there is a bi-party system in the Great Britain and the U.S.A. Where there is a multi-party system, there are more than two important parties in politics. This system prevails in France, West Germany, Italy and certain other countries of Europe. 3. POLITICAL PARTIES AND 2 PARTY SYSTEM IN UNITED KINGDOM (UK) The British parties have been inextricable entwined, cross-fertilizing each other with philosophy, policy, strategy and