Who is against euthanasia

Palliative care actually provides death with dignity and a death considered good by the patient and the care givers. This argument is further defended for those, who have chronic debilitating illness even though it is not terminal such as severe mental illness. Majority of such petitions are filed by the sufferers or family members or their caretakers.

The caregiver's burden is huge and cuts across various domains such as financial, emotional, time, physical, mental and social. Hence, it is uncommon to hear requests from the family members of the person with psychiatric illness to give some poison either to patient or else to them.

Refusing care : Right to refuse medical treatment is well recognised in law, including medical treatment that sustains or prolongs life. For example, a patient suffering from blood cancer can refuse treatment or deny feeds through nasogastric tube. Recognition of right to refuse treatment gives a way for passive euthanasia.

Many do argue that allowing medical termination of pregnancy before 16 wk is also a form of active involuntary euthanasia. This issue of mercy killing of deformed babies has already been in discussion in Holland Right to die : Many patients in a persistent vegetative state or else in chronic illness, do not want to be a burden on their family members.

Encouraging the organ transplantation : Euthanasia in terminally ill patients provides an opportunity to advocate for organ donation. This in turn will help many patients with organ failure waiting for transplantation. On the contrary, the state does not own the responsibility of promoting, protecting and fulfilling the socio-economic rights such as right to food, right to water, right to education and right to health care, which are basic essential ingredients of right to life.

Till date, most of the States has not done anything to support the terminally ill people by providing for hospice care. If the State takes the responsibility of providing reasonable degree of health care, then majority of the euthanasia supporters will definitely reconsider their argument.

We do endorse the Supreme Court Judgement that our contemporary society and public health system is not matured enough to handle this sensitive issue, hence it needs to be withheld.

However, this issue needs to be re-examined again after few years depending upon the evolution of the society with regard to providing health care to the disabled and public health sector with regard to providing health care to poor people.

The Supreme Court judgement to withhold decision on this sensitive issue is a first step towards a new era of health care in terminally ill patients. The Judgment laid down is to preserve harmony within a society, when faced with a complex medical, social and legal dilemma. There is a need to enact a legislation to protect terminally ill patients and also medical practitioners caring for them as per the recommendation of Law Commission Report There is also an urgent need to invest in our health care system, so that poor people suffering from ill health can access free health care.

National Center for Biotechnology Information , U. Indian J Med Res. Santosh K. Author information Copyright and License information Disclaimer.

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3. This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. References 1. Lewy G. Assisted suicide in US and Europe.

International media guidelines must be upheld and complied with. Public opinion polls can be easily manipulated when high media profile and often celebrity-driven 'hard cases' are used to elicit emotional reflex responses without consideration of the strong arguments against legalisation. For more details see our FAQs. About Care Not Killing ». Privacy Policy Cookie Policy. This is especially true if they are facing a terminal illness from which there is no chance of recovery.

Voluntary euthanasia is the start of a slippery slope that leads to involuntary euthanasia and the killing of people who are thought to be undesirable in society. Click to view the current HNZ Position Statement Euthanasia and Assisted Dying What we believe: As an organisation we appreciate that there are a range of views on this challenging and emotive topic; we respect that everyone has the right to their opinion.

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