Research Paper on Euthanasia

Paper Presented to

Professor

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction…………………………………………………………..1

Eight Arguments to Consider…………………………………………2

The Right to Die………………………………………………………2

Patient Suffering……………………………………………………....3

Slippery Slope to Legalized Murder…………………………………..4

Hippocratic Oath and Prohibition of Killing………………………….5

Government Involvement……………………………………………..5

Palliative Care………………………………………………………...6

Healthcare Spending Implications…………………………………….7

Value of Life…………………………………………………………..7

Conclusion…………………………………………………………….8

Works Cited…………………………………………………………..9

EUTHANASIA - The Right to Choose or a Slippery Slope
It is only thru some suffering that we can emerge on the other end to help those that come after us. If everyone who was facing these situations was allowed to die without trying to prevent it we would never be able to study and combat disease and other life ending circumstances. In addition we all know that doctors make mistakes. They are human and as such they could hand someone a life ending diagnosis wrongly and the patient then makes a decision to end their life when there is truly nothing wrong.

Slippery Slope to Legalized Murder

Those in support of euthanasia point to Oregon as an answer to the slippery slope. Since euthanasia has been allowed in Oregon, an average of only 8.8 people per 10,000 deaths have died from physician assisted suicide between the years of 1998 and 2002. This shows that it is hardly a growing trend and that there are sufficient fail safes built into the system to prevent doctors from using this to extend euthanasia into mercy killing of the elderly or mentally challenged as it has been proposed will happen.

The most compelling evidence of this slippery slope is the rise of the Nazi party in Germany and the eventual extermination of millions of Jews under the original guise of “mercy killing”. In 1939 this program, code named “Aktion T4” was initiated when Hitler ordered the widespread “mercy