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What should be the U.S. position in the United Nations on euthanasia?
Background Information:
Euthanasia is the intentional termination of life by another at the explicit request of
the person who dies. To use the term euthanasia, the person who dies must initiate the act.
However, some people define euthanasia to include both voluntary and involuntary
termination of life. It is important to differentiate between a number of vaguely related
terms, those terms being passive euthanasia, active euthanasia, physician assisted suicide,
and involuntary euthanasia. A brief description of each term is provided below:
•
Passive euthanasia: Hastening the death of a person by altering some form of support
and letting nature take its course. For example, removing life support equipment,
stopping medical procedures/medications, stopping food and water and allowing the
person to dehydrate/starve to death, or not delivering CPR, and allowing a person
whose heart has stopped to die.
•
Active Euthanasia: This involves causing the death of a person through a direct
action, in response to a request from that person. A well-known example was the
mercy killing in 1998 of a patient with ALS by Dr. Jack Kevorkian. The patient, who
wanted a quick, painless exit from life, asked Dr. Kevorkian to inject controlled
substances into him, thus causing his death.
•
Physician Assisted Suicide: A physician supplies information and/or the means of
committing suicide to a person, so that they can easily terminate their own life.
Examples of this include the doctor providing the patient with a prescription for lethal
doses of sleeping pills, or a supply of carbon monoxide gas.
•
Involuntary Euthanasia: This term is used by some to describe the killing of a person
who has not explicitly requested aid in dying. This is most often done to patients who
are in a Persistent Vegetative State and will probably never recover consciousness.
•
Physician Assisted Suicide is currently legal only in the state of Oregon, and the
Netherlands. In other jurisdictions, patients are forced to continue living against their
wish, until their body eventually collapses, or until a family member or friend
commits a criminal act by helping them commit suicide.
•
Forced Euthanasia: Euthanizing a person or persons against his or her will.
The word Euthanasia originated from the Greek language, eu meaning good, and atas
meaning death. Euthanasia was legal in the United States until Connecticut v. Mink in 1877,
that made assisted suicide illegal. In Washington et al v. Glucksberg et al the Supreme Court
ruled that it was a crime to assist suicide. The U.S., in an effort to make a further distinction
of the line between passive and active euthanasia, passed the Patient Self-Determination Act
in 1991, which requires health care facilities to notify competent patients of their right for
medical treatment. In 1995, statistics showed that more than 91% of reported cases of
euthanasia and mercy killings in the last eight decades have occurred in the last 14 years.
Presently, Physician Assisted Suicide is legal on in the state of Oregon, and the Netherlands.
In other jurisdictions, patients are forced to continue living against their wishes, until their
body eventually collapses, or until a family member or friend commits a criminal act by
helping them commit suicide. This was determined in 1998. The U.S. Supreme Court has
ruled on the constitutionality of assisted suicide, in 2000, recognizing individual interests and
deciding how, rather than whether they will die.
This problem arrived in the early years of 400 B.C., where it appeared in the
Hippocratic Oath and is still a problem today. In 1935 the Euthanasia Society of England
was formed to promote euthanasia. Then, in 1939, Hitler ordered widespread mercy killing
of the sick and disabled, code name “Aktion T4.” In October of that same year the Nazi
euthanasia program to eliminate “life unworthy of life” at first focused on newborns and very
young children. Midwives and doctors were required to register children up to age three who
showed symptoms of mental retardation, physical deformity, or other symptoms. The
Netherlands legalized euthanasia in 2000 for those with terminal illness, though recently half
the killings in the Netherlands are non-voluntary, and the problems for which death is now
the legal “solution” include such things as mental illness, permanent disability, and even
simple old age. Lastly, and most recently, Belgium legalized euthanasia.
Euthanasia has been an important part of U.N. discussion for many years. In 2000,
delegates reviewed the law legalizing euthanasia in the Netherlands, and more recently, in
2003, when delegates addressed the problem of illegal euthanasia and how to handle it. They
have left the decision up to the country’s government. Currently, the U.N. is taking measures
to define Belgium’s euthanasia law.
United States Position:
Realizing that forced euthanasia is a violation of basic human rights, the United States
believes that the U.N. reserves the right to take economic sanctions and levy fines against
member nations who force this act upon those unwilling to perform it.
Realizing that voluntary euthanasia is an act of personal human right, with the
ratification into a county’s law, the U.N. respects this choice and leaves it to each member
nation to decide if they’ll take non-invasive actions.
Recognizing that countries have policies on euthanasia, the U.N. encourages other
countries to do the same.
Recognizing that forced euthanasia is a form of genocide, the U.N. would like to
make it clear that they do not condone any forma of genocide, and will take extreme
measures, in the form of three-tier punishment:
1) economic sanctions,
2) fine and levy,
3) expulsion and act of war.
Justification and Summary:
It is here that you create the rational for why the U.S. has taken the position is has on
the topic covered in the position paper.