ve obligation to protect life. The second precept is that we have the negative obligation not to destroy or injure human life directly, especially the life of the innocent and invulnerable. It has been reasoned that the protection of innocent life- and therefore, opposition to abortion, murder, suicide, and euthanasia- pertains to the common good of society. Among the potential effects of a legalized practice of euthanasia is reduced pressure to improve curative or symptomatic treatment". If euthanasia had been legal 40 years ago, it is quite possible that there would be no hospice movement today. The improvement in terminal care is a direct result of attempts made to minimize suffering. If that suffering had been extinguished by extinguishing the patients who bore it, then we may never have known the advances in the control of pain, nausea, breathlessness, and other terminal symptoms that the last twenty years have seen. Some diseases that were terminal a few decades ago are now routinely cured by newly developed treatments. Earlier acceptance of euthanasia might well have undercut the urgency of the research efforts which led to the discovery of those treatments. If we accept euthanasia now, we may well delay by decades the discovery of effective treatments for those diseases that are now terminal. (Brock 76) "Abandonment of Hope". Every doctor can tell stories of patients expected to die within days who surprise everyone with their extraordinary recoveries. Every doctor has experienced the wonderful embarrassment of being proven wrong in their pessimistic prognosis. To make euthanasia a legitimate option as soon as the prognosis is pessimistic enough is to reduce the probability of such extraordinary recoveries from low to zero. "Increased fear of hospitals and doctors". Despite all the efforts of health education, it seems there will always be a transference of the patient's fear of illness from the illness to the doctors and hospit...
