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According to the American Dictionary, euthanasia is defined as "the act or practice of ending the life of an individual suffering from a terminal illness or an incurable condition, as by lethal injection or the suspension of extraordinary medical treatment." It can be active euthanasia (relieve person from pain by killing) or passive euthanasia (letting die). Newell-Smith raises the questions if the person has a right to die when he/she wants to and how he/she wants to especially if suffering from terminal disease accompanied with excruciating pain. Since most of painless ways of dying involves assistance, Nowell-Smith states that the person has a very limited right to die when chooses so. He believes that person must have a right to die at a time and manner of his/her choice and that there is no moral difference between passive and active euthanasia. He also concludes that society should change their look at Death itself, not prohibiting its discussion as it once happened to Sex. Therefore he believes that laws on euthanasia should be liberalized. Nowell-Smith arrives at above conclusion by looking at three reasons for euthanasia should not be permitted and setting pros and cons against them hoping that reasons against will be stronger for reader. The reasons are: religious, moral and practical. He takes a detailed look at the last two reasons because there is not much to say about the first one except that God is given us lives and he is the only one who has a right to take is away. Nowell-Smith believes it’s not reasonable to prohibit euthanasia solely on these grounds. Nowell-Smith looks at moral right based and utilitarian theories. The right of not to be killed can be argued against by the right to want to end living. He provides an example of euthanasia societies where a lot of older people who still enjoy live just have a desire to have an opportunity to end their lives the way they want to. The fear of being helpless and slowly dying in the institutions drives these people to join these societies and ask for a law to be changed. Nowell-Smith also makes an argument against Law Reform Commission of Canada’s report Euthanasia, Suicide and Cessation of Treatment that suggests that euthanasia laws should not be changed. One of the arguments is that it may go out of control and could lead to serious abuses and mistakes. Nowell-Smith argues that it can be controlled stating the example of Dutch system where voluntary active euthanasia practices only in hospitals and where everything is considered before any action is done so there is no mistake. Then he moves to discussing differences between passive and active euthanasia. He argues against Commission that states that “seriously disabled infants should not have their lives sustained if their lives are likely to contain more suffering and frustrated desires than happiness and satisfactions”. (CMI, p.27) Nowell-Smith argues that passive euthanasia is still killing and it is probably more merciful to help the child die quickly and without pain than let it die slowly and probably painfully. Therefore if Commission considers allowing passive euthanasia wouldn’t it be more merciful to permit active euthanasia? Considering the points summarized above I believe that Nowell-Smith is in favor of legalizing euthanasia and he believes that changes in law are urgent and people deserve the right to decide when and how to die. He provides strong arguments in his article, enough for a reader who doesn’t have a strong opinion to agree with the writer. But after reading some other articles and looking around the website www.euthanasia.com I found some weak arguments in Nowell-Smith’s article and arguments against them. Also some of the issues like physician’s role in assisting suicide and social impact of euthanasia he didn’t analyze even though these are very important issues. Nowell-Smith is writing about older people who join voluntary euthanasia societies in order to when the time comes and they feel useless, helpless and probably in pain they know that they have an opportunity to end their lives without pain. But could it happen that when the time will come they will not want to end their lives? They look at other older people who die in institutions and the fact of having the same death scares them. But they don’t know that may be a lot of people who die in the institutions enjoyed every day before they died. According to Nowell-Smith these people enjoy lives right now and are not in pain. They might need a lot of care and help when the years past but probably a lot of them will not want to end their lives because human body will struggle till the end to live even if it takes medical assistance, they might want to live to see the daylight of the next day. Concerning the argument regarding Dutch legalizing euthanasia in hospitals and everything is being in controlled, CMDS Executive Director Dr. David Stevens on the www.euthanasia.com have an argument against: "Physicians know it is dangerous for them to have the power to kill patients. Assisted suicide cannot be regulated or controlled, no matter how many safeguards are built in to protect patients from involuntary euthanasia. The data speaks for itself: one in five cases of assisted suicide occurred in Holland without the patient's consent, and in 17 percent of the cases, other treatment options were available. The survey also revealed that almost two-thirds of the euthanasia cases in 1995 were not reported. With this kind of irresponsibility and neglect, who will ever know what really went on between a doctor and a patient when a patient is dead?" There is absolutely no way anybody can say for sure that patient wanted to be dead and not influenced by relatives who wanted to be relieved of burden or simply depression which could have been controlled with medicine. Terminally ill person can be easily influenced into believing that they don’t need to live anymore by physicians or relatives who want inheritance. These could lead to chaos and a lot of suspicious cases. James Rachels in his article Active and Passive Euthanasia shares Nowell-Smith point of no difference between passive and active euthanasia. He says: "Part of my point is that the process of being 'allowed to die' can be relatively slow and painful, whereas being give a lethal injection is relatively quick and painless." (CMI, p.18) We can compare it to the war, when one person could kill another out of pity if he was dying out of serious wound and no help was around. During the war this would be considered a merciful act so the person is destined to die would not have to be in excruciating pain before he died. We could argue that nowadays help is always around and pain could be controlled with drugs but I don’t' believe that any pain can be controlled. Also Rachels in his article gives a good point that if a doctor lets a patient die he puts himself in the same position as if he would give him a lethal injection. If there were a mistake, the regret would be the same. But does the physician has this right or should have this right to kill a person even if one wants to be killed? Today physicians are obliged to treat the patient as best as they can. Also can't it be considered as playing God and kill he patient without even knowing what is life after death. This point was raised by Harrison in Euthanasia, Medicine and the Law. Harrison said: "If physicians pushes the patient through death's door he does so without knowing what is on the other side. That is a denial of responsibility." (CMI, p.15) Nowell-Smith in his article didn't mention a physician's role in euthanasia, which was one of his weaknesses. Nowell-Smith also didn't talk much about social impact of euthanasia, analyzed by Harrison. Harrison believes that legalizing euthanasia can bring social advantages like speed up turnover of beds in hospitals and reduced cost of terminal illness. Reasons like this can lead to abusing euthanasia and probable massive killing, “legal” killing as horrible as this sounds. Nowell-Smith says that person should have a right to decide if he wants to die but patient asking for death may be asking for relieve from mental and physical pain. Is euthanasia is the only way to relieve patient from this pain? Another good argument against Nowell-Smith saying that people should decide when they want to end their lives is by Harrison who is saying that the decision could be brought by emotions, which is probably often the case, but emotions are not a good base for rational judgment. The issue of euthanasia is very complicated, both sides have strong arguments and I don’t' think that consensus will ever be reached. A lot of people have different experiences, different lives and points of view. A lot of debates and research is going on but every person have his own moral, religious and practical standards and beliefs and I don’t' believe that by having a certain point of view one can change his to the opposite easily. Bibliography: Wesley Cragg and Chrisitine M. Koggel, Contemporary Moral Issues, (CMI), Forth Edition, McGraw-Hill Ryerson Limited. Patrick Nowell-Smith, The Right to Die, p.22 James Rachels, Active and Passive Euthanasia, p.17 Colin P. Harrison, Euthanasia, Medicine, and the Law, p.14 Word Count: 1599
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