The Case for Mercy-Killing Essay -- Euthanasia, Mercy-killing, Assiste

Two tolerants sh ar a hospital room. By miraculous circumstance, they are both suffering identical cases of late symbolize terminal cancer, and both have expressed firmly that they dont want their lives to be artificially extended. Patient A has contracted a hospital-borne infection, and will weaken quickly if this infection is not treated. This beingness the case, the sterilises mold to take no action, allowing Patient A to die from the infection. This raises the question what does this excerption imply for Patient B? Should he be allowed to choose dynamical euthanasia to combat his suffering? I will argue that on that point is no moral distinction between permit Patient A die and killing Patient B. I will do so by looking at each patients constituent individually, then applying arguments about euthanasia to their cases, and ultimately bringing them back together to consider a verdict. While some whitethorn argue that in that location is a difference between kil ling Patient B and letting Patient A die, I assert that any(prenominal) such claims are based in irrelevant reason out.First, lets consider the reasoning behind the patients choosing to forego extraordinary treatment for their cancer. They have decided, as Beauchamp would lay it, that refusing to prolong their lives in the face of pain and suffering neither harms nor wrongs them and may provide a benefit (Beauchamp, 76). They intend to quit life because of its tender possibilities (Beauchamp, 77). The doctor readily complies with their wishes out of moral, legal, and professional obligation. A choice has been do to let both patients die, as a response to their competent and imperious refusal of treatment (Beauchamp 74).In Patient As case, he was thriving enough (in the most morbid way possible) to... ...es out of mercy. Beauchamp puts it eloquently when he says From a moral point of view, causing a persons destruction is wrong when it is wrong not because the death is inten ded or because it is caused, but because an unjustified harm or loss to the person occurs (Beauchamp, 76). The remonstration that killing Patient B is worse than allowing Patient A to die does not survive, because such a claim is based on the assertion that a killing would be unjust. The doctor and the patients have decided that death is preferable to life, and there is no injustice involved in any possible outcome from there on out. Squeamishness about the doctor being responsible for killing Patient B, directly, has no place in the discussion, because by the time the discussion is taking place, that would be like being squeamish over the doctor prescribing morphine to reduce a patients suffering.