Essay About Elderly Patients And Dr. Peter Haemmerli

Euthanasia: When Life Is to Be Feared More Than Death
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Nathan Haase
Mr. Green
Current Issues 302
10 December 2002
Euthanasia: When life is to be feared more than death
the elderly patientsare comatose. They weigh
practically nothing. Their skin hangs in heavy
folds on their skeletons. These patients must be
fed through gastric tubes pushed down their throats,
Dr. Peter Haemmerli explains, and that can make even
comatose patients retch and vomit (Culliton 1273).
Thus, according to Barbara J. Culliton, many severely ill patients must endure much pain.
Not a very pretty scene, is it? Is it right to keep them living in this pain? Wouldnt it be
more humane to give them a painless release from their agony? For this irreversibly comatose
patient euthanasia would be justified. Now consider the patient suffering from malignant cancer
or some other terminal disease.
How “right” is it to keep injecting drugs and performing small operations to keep the
patient alive, only to lengthen his suffering? As in the case of the irreversibly comatose
patient, euthanasia is not only morally justified, it is the only alternative for those truly
concerned with the patients welfare.
Euthanasia is clinically defined as an “act or practice of painlessly putting to death
persons suffering from incurable conditions or diseases (Bok 1). The word “euthanasia” is
generally also applied to cases in which the doctor withdraws the machines or drugs which are
keeping the patient alive and thus allows the patient to die naturally.
Knight 2
Euthanasia ends pain mercifully and easily. It is used when the pain of degradation of
life or the pain of a terminal disease is greater than the pain of death (Heifetz 5). In these
cases death is not the nightmare experienced in war, but rather an alternative to endless pain.
“At times we must look at death as a welcome release from an untenable life. Death need not be
a source of horror. It can be freedom, a release from agony” (Heifetz 5). This observation by
Dr. Milton D. Heifetz encompasses the purpose of euthanasia: to provide ” a welcome