It’s difficult even to imagine how a person deals with the terrifying experiences and pain that he/she suffers during a terminal illness. Even when their loved ones try to give them all of their love and care along with medical treatments, keeping the hopes high of recovering can be extremely difficult for people who are in their end-of-life phases.
People must face their fears and challenge their health issues to make end-of-life decisions, especially while consulting with the doctor. This is when patients need to gather courage and ask for the best possible treatment to fight a disease and recover well.
However, people should make these consultation processes a bit polite, so that patients can feel at ease and to do this, nothing can work better than attaching the vibes of some personal care to patients. So, it’s better to ask doctors “What would you prefer if you have been in this situation?”. Doctors must be open with their patients and make them aware of their conditions, so they can make their end-of-life decisions cautiously without assuming things.
Making end-of-life decisions can be oppressive, but there are treatments and end-of-life care such as hospice and palliative care that can help people suffering from pain and support to reduce the stress of making end-of-life decisions, which can be a huge support.
However, where it can be so difficult to make end-of-life decisions, it’s better to consult rather than assume the consequences. Everyone has their sufferings and opinions on what to choose as their end-of-life care whether it could be certain decisions regarding critical treatments or undergoing the thanatological support.
People face issues when they suffer the mental and physical become unbearable. Situations like these often lead to depression and anxiety of getting rid of everything, and this mood sometimes results in suicidal attempts, when people don’t want to live anymore. Suicide sounds a bit harsh, but it becomes a necessary action when the suffering is endless and diseases are incurable.
Many people might not know, but there are end-of-life decisions that help people end their sufferings and pain legally by assisting a person in their death such as euthanasia and assisted suicide. Nevertheless, ending the suffering of people by intentionally killing them is helpful? Is it even good for society? And do many people opt for these ways? Let’s discuss a bit more about it.
Euthanasia
Euthanasia is a type of end-of-life practice to end the sufferings of a terminally ill patient by withdrawing the artificial means of medical care and helping him/her to get a painless death. Now, painless death may sound right, but what about intentional death?
When a person deliberately ends his own life, it is known as suicide and when someone else helps end a life, it’s known as murder.
Euthanasia is offered to a patient and it’s his/her right whether they want to accept it or not. However, there are certain aspects of euthanasia that nobody talks about, which is the dignity of the patient.
Instead of alleviating the pain, the advice of opting for euthanasia kills a person mentally and makes the situation worse, especially when someone suggests it. Suppose a person is suffering from an incurable disease and gets painful treatments regularly, but he/she has hope to live longer and to be saved, how would this person feel when their loved ones or their doctors advise them to end their life? This can make patients feel devalued or there is no meaning of his/her life to people around them anymore.
Even though euthanasia has been legalized in a few countries, doing it against the patient’s consent or wish is illegal and an offense towards patients’ lives. Even nobody is allowed to force a patient to opt for euthanasia, especially when they want to live.
In Canada, a differently-abled Canadian woman was told three times to take euthanasia, which is a forceful decision to accept death. It is certainly unlawful as everybody has the right to live.
When sufferings are endless and the patient is willing to opt for euthanasia without any external influence, there is nothing wrong with it. However, euthanasia can become a threat to society when people start taking advantage of it.
MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) offers help to patients to end their life peacefully. However, medical assistance requires money to get treated and many vulnerable people cannot afford to pay for it.
The rate of people opting for MAID in Canada is significantly high as per the data. However, is it really true? Can 10,000 people have this courage or are they willing to opt for euthanasia? People live, take treatments, and then die. There are very few people who opt for euthanasia.
If in a country, the rate of MAID is this high, it should be a matter of concern and dispute among people whether they are choosing for right treatment and hospital and doctors as everyone associated with medical care is a part of this.
Moving on, there are 195 countries in the world and only six countries have legalized euthanasia. Patients need support love and care in their end-of-life decisions, not the “suicidal” suggestions, especially when medical practitioners do not want to put their time and equipment into supporting a patient for a longer period. It should only be given to those people who are asking for it by themselves, not through a suggestion, and if there are possibilities for them to recover or live longer, there is no way euthanasia should be allowed for anyone.
Assisted Suicide
Assisted suicide is a term used for the practice done by doctors by providing medications to people to end their life purposely. More like euthanasia, the doctors assist patients to end their own lives with their own hands with the help of drugs.
Certain people demand to legalization of the process of assisted suicide for people who do not have the quality of life or want to end their pain and suffering forever.
Many big personalities have talked about assisted suicide being legalized as if people have the choice to live accordingly, they must have a choice to die. However, other prospects of assisted suicide might seem more reasonable than these statements mere statements.
When a law is passed, it is passed by analyzing its positive and negative aspects and how it will affect people’s lives in the future. There can be tremendous prospects that can highly affect the mortality rate in a particular region.
One of these aspects is about the people who are not productive anymore. Nowadays, everyone plans to get rid of even the tiniest things that can affect their lives whether it’s people or things. If this type of law were legalized, it could be used more as leverage against people who are not productive and this is not it only. People can use assisted suicide as an excuse for resolving their personal issues, especially when a caretaker or guardian starts to taking care of their loved one’s life as a burden.
However, what actually is important is the fact that people must be saved regardless of their background, sufferings, and other personal, mental, or social conflicts. Assisted suicides must be the rare cases for which people should take legal help from the judiciary. As a matter of fact, it shouldn’t be legalized for everyone as people will misuse this right to death for different purposes.
The question should be this – Do people need assisted suicides, euthanasia, or the right to death more than love, support, and end-of-life care?
If we look into it more carefully and deeply, there are actually ways like palliative care, thanatology, and end-of-life care that can help people hold on to hope, not give up on their lives, and have that natural support that people deserve and want from their loved ones in their critical times.
Patients’ Rights in End-of-Life Decisions
Government has laws in almost every country for patients to protect their rights to live and take treatments as per their choices. However, many people don’t know about these laws and many healthcare providers do not even inform them.
Sometimes, it leads to worse, unlawful, and disgusting conditions that may seem like a threat to persons who rely on medical care to recover and have hope to live a happy and peaceful life again.
For instance, cancer patients opt for chemotherapy as the only way to be saved but it comes with several side effects. To get this therapy, they are asked to sign the consent regarding the side effects that can occur to them and may be life-threatening. Doctors are only allowed to give these informed consents to patients when they have properly informed their patients about the consequences that they may face after the treatment. If a doctor hasn’t informed about these consequences before the treatment, so that patients can make a decision, it is a violation of the law and people must be punished for this.
As per the laws, patients have the right to know about their medical condition and the consequences they will face after getting a certain treatment. Also, patients need to be informed about every possible end-of-life care such as palliative care or thanatology that can support them better during their treatment.
Things like euthanasia and assisted suicide must be prohibited and if someone is in a huge dilemma and enormously unbearable pain as they want to continue living anymore, they should petition to end their lives legally. The other way around, nobody wants to die, some circumstances force them to end their lives, which is most of the time a thought that swiftly goes away when a person feels relaxed.