This link has been bookmarked by 19 people . It was first bookmarked on 22 Sep 2006, by windhamms.
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18 Mar 12
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voluntary euthanasia — that is, with
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involuntary euthanasia,
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The Netherlands culminated in an
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Supreme Court of the United States ruled that there is no constitutional right to
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06 Feb 12
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r unable to, express a wish about euthanasia and there is no one authorised to make a substituted judgment (i
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slippery slope to permitting non-voluntary euthanasia.
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15 Nov 11
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When a person carries out an act of euthanasia, he brings about the death of another person because he believes the latter's present existence is so bad that she would be better off dead, or believes that unless he intervenes and ends her life, it will become so bad that she would be better off dead. The motive of the person who commits an act of euthanasia is to benefit the one whose death is brought about. (Though what was just said also holds for many instances of physician-assisted suicide, some wish to restrict the use of the latter term to forms of assistance which stop short of the physician ‘bringing about the death’ of the patient, such as those involving mechanical means that have to be activated by the patient.)
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04 Dec 10
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23 Nov 10
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The central ethical argument for voluntary euthanasia — that respect for persons demands respect for their autonomous choices as long as those choices do not result in harm to others
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people take responsibility for their lives; since dying is a part of life, choices about the manner of their dying and the timing of their death are, for many people, part of what is involved in taking responsibility for their lives
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It is often said that it is not necessary nowadays for anyone to die while suffering from intolerable or overwhelming pain. We are getting better at providing effective palliative care, and hospice care is more widely available.
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we can never have sufficient evidence to be justified in believing that a dying person's request to be helped to die is competent, enduring and genuinely voluntary.
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It is certainly true that a request to die may not reflect an enduring desire to die (just as some attempts to commit suicide may reflect temporary despair).
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According to the doctrine of double effect, it is, for example, permissible to alleviate pain by administering drugs such as morphine, knowing that doing so will shorten life, but impermissible to give an overdose or injection with the direct intention of terminating a patient's life (whether at her request or not)
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It is often said that if society allows voluntary euthanasia to be legally permitted, then we will have set foot on a slippery slope that will lead us to support other forms of euthanasia, including non-voluntary euthanasia
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06 Apr 10
Jessica Cannon2. Five Individually Necessary Conditions for Candidacy for Voluntary Euthanasia.\nThis article, specifically #2, explains necessary conditons to be applied for those seeking out fo Voluntary Euthanasia. It has reasons of it that are vital, it explains background, and is very helpful. (Suffering terminal illness, no cure for unbearable illness, Intollerable pain, unable assistance of suidice, wishing to "die")
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07 Mar 10
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voluntary euthanasia — that is, with those instances of euthanasia in which a clearly competent person makes a voluntary and enduring request to be helped to die. There will be occasion to mention non-voluntary euthanasia -- instances of euthanasia where a person is either not competent to, or unable to, express a wish about euthanasia and there is no one authorised to make a substituted judgment (in which case a proxy tries to choose as the no-longer-competent patient would have chosen had she remained competent) —
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Advocates of voluntary euthanasia contend that if a person
(a) is suffering from a terminal illness;
(b) is unlikely to benefit from the discovery of a cure for that illness during what remains of her life expectancy;
(c) is, as a direct result of the illness, either suffering intolerable pain, or only has available a life that is unacceptably burdensome (because the illness has to be treated in ways that lead to her being unacceptably dependent on others or on technological means of life support);
(d) has an enduring, voluntary and competent wish to die (or has, prior to losing the competence to do so, expressed a wish to die in the event that conditions (a)-(c) are satisfied); and
(e) is unable without assistance to commit suicide,
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A second, related objection to permitting the legalization of voluntary euthanasia argues that we can never have sufficient evidence to be justified in believing that a dying person's request to be helped to die is competent, enduring and genuinely voluntary.
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According to one interpretation of the traditional ‘doctrine of double effect’ it is permissible to act in ways which it is foreseen will have bad consequences, provided only that
(a) this occurs as a side effect (or, indirectly) to the achievement of the act that is directly aimed at;
(b) the act directly aimed at is itself morally good or, at least, morally neutral;
(c) the good effect is not achieved by way of the bad, that is, the bad must not be a means to the good; and
(d) the bad consequences must not be so serious as to outweigh the good effect.
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There is a widespread belief that passive (voluntary) euthanasia, in which life-sustaining or life-prolonging measures are withdrawn or withheld, is morally acceptable because steps are simply not taken which could preserve or prolong life (and so a patient is allowed to die), whereas active (voluntary) euthanasia is not, because it requires an act of killing. The distinction, despite its widespread popularity, is very unclear. (For a fuller, and very helpful, discussion, see McMahan, 2002.) Whether behaviour is described in terms of acts or omissions (a distinction which underpins the alleged difference between active and passive voluntary euthanasia), is generally a matter of pragmatics rather than anything of deeper importance. Consider, for instance, the practice (once common in hospitals) of deliberately proceeding slowly to a ward in response to a request to provide assistance for a patient subject to a ‘not for resuscitation’ code. Or consider ‘pulling the plug’ on an oxygen machine keeping an otherwise dying patient alive as against not replacing the tank when it runs out. Are these acts or omissions; are these cases of passive euthanasia or active euthanasia?
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It is often said that if society allows voluntary euthanasia to be legally permitted, then we will have set foot on a slippery slope that will lead us to support other forms of euthanasia, including non-voluntary euthanasia. Whereas it was once the common refrain that that was precisely what happened in Hitler's Germany, in recent decades the tendency has been to claim that experience in The Netherlands has confirmed the reality of the slippery slope. Slippery slope arguments come in various versions. One (but not the only) way of classifying them has been to refer to logical, psychological and arbitrary line versions. The common feature of the different forms is the contention that once the first step is taken on a slippery slope the subsequent steps follow inexorably, whether for logical reasons, psychological reasons, or to avoid arbitrariness in ‘drawing a line’ between a person's actions. (For further discussion see e.g. Rachels, 1986, ch. 10; Brock, 1992, pp. 19ff; Walton, 1992
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Finally, since there is nothing arbitrary about distinguishing voluntary euthanasia from non-voluntary euthanasia (because the line between them is based on clear principles), there can be no substance to the charge that only by arbitrarily drawing a line between them could non-voluntary euthanasia be avoided once voluntary euthanasia was legalized
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02 Jan 08
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