Healthcare Ethics

The bioethics debate surrounding physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia centers on how lives are valued. The article by Papavasiliou et al. (2014) focuses on the issue of whether physician-assisted suicide is morally permissive in healthcare. Opponents argue that it is wrong to take away someone elses life when they do not want any more pain, while others believe in a moral philosophy where patients deserve an easier death than what nature has prescribed for them because living with illness or injury can be painful enough (Papavasiliou et al., 2014). Terminal sedation may appear as though there would not really ever need be anyone requesting its use but this type of intervention involves administrative oversight; withdrawing care from a patient whose vitals have stopped - whether by choice or by nature.

Terminal sedationor palliative sedationis the continuous administration of sedative drugs to a dying patient in order to keep them unconscious until death occurs. The main aim of terminal sedation is to relieve suffering, rather than hasten death. It is important to distinguish between terminal sedation and euthanasia, as they are two very different things. Terminal sedation is sometimes seen as a more humane way of dying than euthanasia, as it does not involve hastening death (Papavasiliou et al., 2014). However, some people argue that it is morally wrong to keep someone unconscious until they die,...

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All in all, those cases are when a patient is on life support; if life support is withdrawn, it is typically not viewed by many doctors as being immoral or unethical. What is the real moral issue is whether a patient can request terminal sedation before reaching a point where life support is even needed. That is where, Papavasiliou et al. (2014) show most doctors draw the line: they would say that a patient cannot ethically ask a doctor to euthanize when the patient is not on life support, and…