(Dax) Cowart: The Conflict Between Beneficence And Autonomy

Both the legal and ethical issues of this situation have the do with the legality of the living will. As this was a document drafted and signed by the patient when she was in sound mental condition, the contents of it should be respected, even with regard to this situation. The husband has stated that the patient never intended for the living

This must be considered because a patient could live a better life if their mental illness is treated. However, if there is no mental illness or if the patient has an untreatable mental illness, then that patient might be better off dead. An untreatable patient’s desire to be killed by a physician should only be considered if it is to decrease the patient’s suffering; the idea of suffering was brought up by Hooker (Blackwell, 2014, p. 80). I will discuss two possibilities that can lead to a patient’s suffering. One, an untreatable patient can want to be killed by a physician because a patient does not want to suffer physically for the rest of their life and would like to die in the least painful way possible; the idea of suffering brought up by Hooker (Blackwell, 2014, p. 80). The second way a patient can suffer is mentally, or as Hooker stated emotionally on page 80, and I will discuss three possible ways a patient can suffer mentally (Blackwell, 2014). One way mental suffering can occur is from a severe untreatable mental illness. Another way it can be caused is by

Ethics of healthcare depends on 4 moral standards and how they are utilised; autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence, and justice. Autonomy, which means self-governance, is the rule for regarding the privileges of a person to settle on a choice for them self, and respecting that decision. In healthcare this implies regarding a patient's choice on treatments, regardless of the possibility that it could bring about damage or demise to themselves. Autonomy is about self-rule, control free, without impact or influence from any other person, and is tied in with making an educated and un-forced choice about their care and medicines, based from their qualities and inclinations.

Life is a story full of chapters where we experience trials and tribulations in so many ways. As we may already be aware of, humans do not live forever. Life comes to an ending that is inevitable. Death is a difficult part of life to grasp. Furthermore, people have no control of how the end of life will take place. Some suffer more than others, people experience death differently due to different causes of death. Moreover, in health care, physicians experience difficult situations that require ethical decisions. Patients at the end of life process do not always have the capability to make decisions for themselves. The burden to make medical decisions is left to families and physician’s. Some cases are so intense, because patients voluntarily request assisted suicide. More specifically, physician assisted suicide with the means to end his or her life causing death. Physician assisted suicide raises arguments, of what is morally right or wrong. Although physician assisted suicide raises concerns, both

Atul Gawande in his article “Whose body is it, anyway?” introduced couple of cases, which discussed a controversial topic, doctors dealing with patients and making important medical decisions. These are difficult decisions in which people might have life or death choices. Who should make the important decisions, patients or doctors? Patients don’t usually know what is better for their health and while making their decisions, they might ignore or don’t know the possible side effects and consequences of these decisions. Doctors and physicians have more and better knowledge than normal people about human body and they are able to assist their patients while making tough decisions. However, they can not always make the right decision. Doctors can not predict the result of a surgery or a treatment and they do not have enough confidence of the result because sometimes the surgery could go in a way they didn’t expect. Although patients have the right to decide their treatments, doctors and patients should share

Huttmann (2004) stated, “until there is legislation making it a criminal act to code a patient who has requested the right to die, we will all risk the same fate as Mac” (p.345). In that example Huttmann is trying to put the people in the same situation as Mac, basically she is asking the audience do they want to suffer like Mac or to rest in peace like what she did for Mac. This problem is controversial and it need to be stopped, because a lot of people have been suffering like Mac and they should have the choice to live or die. Huttmann stated in her essay that the doctors are trying to act “God” because they took away the ability to die as we please. (Barbara Huttmann ,2004). Honestly, every person should have the right to choose to live or die if they had a fatal illness like Mac, because everyone will be in the exact same place as Mac, the patients will be really tired of delaying the inventible. Because sometimes medical technology can’t fix a problem. And the doctors are only delaying death which leaves out the patient suffering and that is really unfair. What really supports Huttmann’s essay from the audience perspective is that she is credible because she works in a hospital as a nurse and that makes her essay

The dying patient no longer has quality of life, they have lost their independence, are lonely, are forced to endure inevitable pain, are publicly humiliated, are suffering immensely, and are forced to watch their loved ones grieve because of them. It is an innate Constitutional Right to choose how to die, since we all will die. There comes a point when the poking and prodding becomes too much, when the patient wants to just die in silence in the loving arms of their

Physician-assisted suicide is when a doctor provides the means and the information necessary for a patient to end his life. A bill legalizing physician-assisted suicide was recently signed into law in California, and four other states have also legalized physician-assisted suicide. While many people may say that physician-assisted suicide should not be legal, the fact of the matter is that assisted suicide is a way to end a terminally ill patient’s suffering, and therefore should be legal.

The Terri Schiavo case was a huge start of the “Right to Die” movement, the underlying cause of Schiavo’s collapse was never given a diagnosis. Consequentialist moral theories focus on how much good can result from an action. Non Consequentialist moral theories or Deontological theories, consider not the consequences of an action but whether they fulfill a duty. Some theories that can be used include utilitarianism, Kant’s ethics and natural law theory. Being aware of the case already, I believe there should be some sort of law that gives doctors to comply with the wishes of the patient if they are in a lot of distress.

One of the main objections to autonomy-based justifications of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) that Gill talks about is that many people believe it does not promote autonomy, but instead is actually taking it away (366). First, it is important to clarify what autonomy means. According to Gill, it is the ability of a person to make big decisions regarding their own life (369). Opponents of PAS argue that it takes away a person’s ability to make these big decisions and so it is intrinsically wrong for them to choose to take their own life.

If the patient were to die during surgery or procedures, the physicians would not be held accountable if the patient signs the consent form stating they were aware of the risks to their care. It’s important for the patient to ask any questions if they are confused on any information that was given to them. Even though, if the patient is diagnosed with a life-threatening disease or infection they have the right to refuse from signing the consent form. Since the patient is legally competent to make their own decisions that regard their health, they can still disregard any treatments that are being done to them. In most cases, doctors that perform experiments on the patient without their knowledge and without their consent is known as unethical human experiment. Around the 1900s, doctors’ experimentation on their patients that involved their consent had raised little concern. Between 1920 and 1930, Syphilis was a crucial health problem. Healthcare was offered to people who earned low incomes in the South. African Americans were normally low-income citizens in the South and they were not perceived equal to whites. They were prone to have more health problems. There was a group launch called the Julius Rosenwald Fund that originally promoted proper health care for blacks. Yet, after the Great Depression, the organization was reformed.

The Equal Protection Clause under the fourteenth amendment of the U.S. constitution states that “No state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This clause is utilized upon arguing for allowing assisted suicide due to the fact that “New York permits a competent person to refuse life sustaining medical treatment, and because the refusal of such treatment is ‘essentially the same thing’ as a physician assisted suicide…” (Vacco v Quill, p. 423). As previously stated, both refusing medical treatment that could keep you from death, or prolong the process, and assisted suicide are being drawn by comparison to make the claim or argument that both cases should be treated equally under the Equal Protection

The concept and ideology behind Physician-Assisted Suicide within the contemporary generation has become an exceptionally sensitive and controversial issue as multiple factors conglomerate to define if Physician-Assisted Suicide is justifiable within the grounds of ethical understanding and moral principles. The idea concerning PAS is based on the grounds of rational and irrational thinking as in if death is a rational choice above all other alternatives (Wittwer 420).

The word “euthanize” means to bring about a person’s death to relieve them from serious distress. The topic of euthanasia in medicine has evolved since intensive care was first instituted. Before the 1950’s, a simple model was used to determine when someone was dead: the individual was dead when his or her heart stopped beating. In the modern light, the answer to this question isn’t as clear. With advancements in organ transplantation and other medical technologies, the stopping of a beating heart is no longer a definite death sentence. This prolonging of life brings about many ethical dilemmas in the field of medicine. One of the issues is patient autonomy. The practice of euthanasia has been established to put the choice back into the hands of the patient. To better understand euthanasia, there are five different types.

Many pro-euthanasia believers will use the autonomy argument and debate the opinion that patients should have the right to choose when and how to they want to die. In an article in the Houston Chronicle, Judge Reinhardt ruled on this topic by stating “a competent, terminally-ill adult, having lived nearly the full measure of his life, has a strong liberty interest in choosing a dignified and humane death… (De La Torre).” However, dignity cannot be measured by the level of pain or the speed in which the individual dies, because it is already a characteristic of a person’s worth as a human being (Middleton). Allowing a patient to live their life to the fullest until the very end is surely a more humane and dignified death then cutting that life short in fear of what it is coming through the practice of euthanasia. While death for these patients can be a sad ending, it does not have to condemn a person to a remaining life of sadness and negativity. In an article for Verily Magazine, Sophie Caldecott described her terminally ill father’s painful yet beautiful last years of