Euthanasia is defined as “the art of painlessly putting to death persons suffering from incurable conditions or diseases”. Euthanasia has been around for centuries. It is known to have been used in 400 BC when Plato was alive. Arguments concerning euthanasia really started to show up more in the early 20th century. In 1938, Charles Francis Potter found in the Euthanasia Society of America. The World Medical Association voted to condemn euthanasia in 1950 under any circumstance, but then in 1973 recognized the patient's right to refuse treatment with a bill called the “Patient's Bill of Rights”.
The word euthanasia comes from the Greek words eu meaning “good” and thanatos meaning “death” .
There are many different types of euthanasia, but they all fall under two main categories: active and passive.
Active euthanasia is someone physically doing something to help end someone else's life.
Four forms of active euthanasia are active injection, assisted suicide, killing by family members, and physician-assisted suicide. There were two different types of active injection. The first type is an injection administered without consent and is done to “put someone out of his misery”. The second type is a patient requesting it so he no longer has to suffer. Assisted suicide is someone assisting an individual to commit suicide. Killing by family members and physician-assisted suicide are both forms of assisted suicide. Both are meant to provide relief to the individual and are usually based on previously expressed wishes. This type is becoming more and more popular.
Passive euthanasia is allowing nature to take its course by stopping all medical treatment keeping the patient alive.
Some examples of passive euthanasia include “Do Not Resuscitate Orders”, transferring to die, and withholding or removing life-sustaining treatment. When a patient signs a “Do Not Resuscitate Order” he is keeping the physician from using machines and heroic measures to keep him alive. These are becoming more and more popular for terminally ill patients. Transferring to die is a physician transferring a patient to a different hospital hoping he will die during the transfer. Withholding life-sustaining treatment is also a form of passive euthanasia. This is a physician no longer using ordinary means of medicine and treatment, such as feeding tubes and intravenous fluids, which causes the patient to die faster.
Euthanasia is further broken down into voluntary or involuntary.
Voluntary is if the patient or individual decides he no longer wants to live.
Involuntary is if the family or loved ones decide because the individual cannot make the choice whether to continue living or to die, like when a patient is brain dead.
