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Branham 1
Jessica Branham
Professor Betty Fennewald
Composition II LAL 102
25 April 2016
Suffer or Not Suffer?
Huge purple, grape-like masses continuously grew under the chin of a patient
diagnosed with Oral cancer and given two years to live. Those huge masses was
the cancerous tumor, when the man would eat, the growth would start collecting
food. When it would start growing to about grapefruit size the doctors would
amputate it. However, this did not do much justice, because the growth would just
come back. Amputation after amputation made the patient very unhappy, and in
excruciating pain where he wanted to end his life. He and his family frequently asked
doctors to put an end to his suffering. The family even went to court to end his life,
but they were still told “no”. He was suffering miserably and the cancer would never
go away. Eventually he came down with phenomena, and instead of trying to revive
him, the family told the doctors to let him go in peace (Chinn). If Euthanasia was
legal, then this suffering man could have ended his pain early, but due to
complications in the legal system, his last months were extremely uncomfortable.
Euthanasia is usually separated into two categories: passive euthanasia and
active euthanasia. In many jurisdictions, active euthanasia can be considered
murder or manslaughter, whereas passive euthanasia is accepted by professional
medical societies, and by the law under certain circumstances (A Euthanasia
Glossary).
Branham 2
Euthanasia comes from the Greek words, Eu (good) and Thanatosis (death)
and it means "Good Death, "Gentle and Easy Death." This word has come to be
used for "mercy killing." In this sense euthanasia means the active death of the
patient, or, inactive in the case of dehydration and starvation. In ancient Greece,
suicide of the patient who was suffering extreme pain and had an incurable terminal
illness was given by the physician medicine (a poisoned drink). Plato wrote:
"Mentally and physically ill persons should be left to death; they do not have the right
to live." However, throughout time religion was increased, and the life of a human
being was viewed as sacred. Because of this, euthanasia was slowly portrayed as
wrong (Andre).
Like the physicians in ancient Greece Jack Kevorkian believed that people
