Hippocratic Oath And Euthanasia Research Paper

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Pages: 6
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Yasmin Osman
Prof. Gregory Polakoff Humanities BXH
March 30, 2017
The Hippocratic Oath and Euthanasia: The Stance of Morality on Euthanasia Through every revolution, the world has been inclined to follow rules and to abide by what is written in the books. The resistance to evolution is due to the comfort of what is known, and fear of shifting this comfort into curiosity. Steps have continuously been taken by those who wish to rewrite the present, towards creating a substantially better version of the present, whether it is in politics, sports, sciences, philosophy and more. Medicine has thus endlessly transformed and shift to adapt to its time, but it has often struggled towards its roots and origins. The Hippocratic Oath, a symbol …show more content…
Passive euthanasia, the alternative to active, defines the removal of sources of care to a patient, thus accelerating a foreseeable death. Feelings of guilt would not necessarily be felt by a physician letting a patient die, as they were not directly involved or responsible for the death. “If we kill someone, then we are the cause of his death. But if we merely let someone die, we are not the cause, rather he dies of whatever condition he already has,” (Rachels, 114). The fear of guilt of doing what is symbolically an act of harm to a patient can be what stops a doctor from “mercy-killing.” The impersonal aspect of passive euthanasia makes it more preferable, as it is “doing nothing” rather than “doing no harm”. However, as Brecht’s Galileo declares: “Everyone says: right, that’s what it says in the books, but let’s have a look for ourselves” (7). If a capable physician stands by and does nothing as a patient’s inevitable, prolonged suffering occurs, is he not harming the patient? Is allowing nature’s harm come to the patient a form of medicine? Is doing nothing synonymous with doing good? Thus, by using medicine to clearly see the suffering of a patient and by using the instinct of doing what will remove harm, a physician’s role in active euthanasia is ethically and morally
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