Answer To: PCC302_Assessment_3_Brief_Essay_Module 6.1 XXXXXXXXXXPage 1 of 6 Task Summary In this assessment...
Somashree answered on Aug 14 2021
2
Withdrawal of treatment
Is withdrawal of treatment considered euthanasia? Why or why not?
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Introduction
Withdrawal treatment and euthanasia have remained a controversial topic since ages. Euthanasia is also referred to as physical-assisted killing in order to get relief from persistent suffering. In most of the countries, euthanasia is illegal and depicts jail sentence if the law is broken. Euthanasia can be classified as voluntary and non-voluntary. Voluntary euthanasia refers to the euthanasia that is carried out with consent. This is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and others. One the other hand, non-voluntary refers to the euthanasia carried out with the patient’s family or close relative’s consent. Besides this, there are two procedural classifications of euthanasia, namely active and passive. Active euthanasia refers to the use of lethal substances to end an individual’s life. On the contrary, passive euthanasia refers to the withdrawal of life-supporting needs. Euthanasia is confused with withdrawal treatment. Some critics state that these two are distinct whereas, some suggest that these two teams are the same. In this regard, the essay highlights a critical evaluation of the topic ‘whether withdrawal treatment is considered as euthanasia or not’.
Discussion
End-of-life situations are considered to be the most significant areas of controversy in recent years concerning modern bioethics (Sanchini et al., 2014). Until today, very few nations have implemented this progressive approach of acquiring the direct elimination of life by a healthcare professional. Most of the countries are evident to follow the traditional interdiction of active and voluntary euthanasia. It highlights the likeliness of the controversy that emphasizes the practice of withdrawing medical treatment concerning life-sustaining treatments (Aubry, 2016). Additionally, to withdraw some kinds of treatment, the easiest way is to defend the patients from unavoidable adverse outcomes of life-prolonging medical support. This specifically occurs when the quality of life of the individual decreases rapidly.
The US has developed a conventional method of legal experience with this kind of medical decision-making processes. This includes admissible standards that are widely accepted and sufficiently defined both for incompetent and competent patients. On the other hand, in Italy, for numerous cultural reasons, withdrawal treatment practice is still under judgment. Reichlin (2014) stated that decisions concerning relinquish medical treatments are taken in the ICUs of Italian hospitals; however, there is a lack of publicly declared and accepted policies for implementing them. Moreover, the evidence of a lack of agreement has given rise to a large public controversy considering two cases that have imposed questions on the public's moral sense. This controversy is related to withdrawal treatment at the end-of-life. The first case considering Piergiorgio Welby, the artificial ventilator was removed from him when he encountered a prolonged suffering phase from LAS (lateral amyotrophic sclerosis). On the other hand, the second case considering Eluana Englaro highlights that ANH (artificial nutrition and hydration) was removed from her after she suffered in this stage for more than 17-years. Both the cases triggered immense and widespread debate suggesting whether the medical killing was necessary. The public believed that medical killing could not be supported and the patients must be provided with all the life support systems to motivate and generate hope to the individual regarding the recovery time (Cohen-Almagor & Ely, 2018). The public raised concerns against the tribunals in these two cases highlighting the fact that physicians were not involved during the medical killing process.
The debate concerning Englaro case took a turn when discussion regarding ANH to be a kind of therapy sparked. Additionally, the lower courts, which had denied a grant to the removal of ANH, declared that only certain medical treatments must be counted as therapies that are judgmentally appropriate and can be legally denied by the competent patient. This can also be supported by an incompetent patient’s legal attorney (Ciliberti et al., 2018). In comparison to this, most of the opposition considering the Supreme Court's final verdict was with the acceptance of removal of ANH. This generated that this was the determinable will of the irreversibly unconscious individual. This was subjected to a confusing argument stating that it was not the case of determining the accurate utilization of medical technology but to generate food and water to an impaired individual.
On the other hand, the Welby case was not complicated by the questions raised in the...