Euthanasia, meaning a good death in Greek, is the practise of killing someone who is terminally ill to prevent them from further pain and suffering. The debate on the use of euthanasia has been on-going for the past fifteen years, after late president Nelson Mandela has asked the South African Law commission to undertake a project addressing the matters involved in end-of-life-decisions, as a result the End of Life Decisions Act was proposed but never passed into law. Many believe that if euthanasia were accepted as an option for the terminally ill we would be accepting that some lives were worth more than others and that murder is an acceptable way of dealing with chronically ill patients. However, euthanasia is not murder but a way of preserving …show more content…
Palliative care is an example of one of these alternatives, which are often over looked. Palliative care is medical care focused on providing patients with relief from pain and suffering, by providing pain reducing medication. However as time progresses the patients body will become resistant to this medication and stronger doses would have to be administered. These doses will gradually increase and inevitably become lethal. The pain medication does not kill the patient immediately but does accelerate the patient’s inevitable death. This unlike euthanasia is accepted as legal in South Africa as the intention was never to kill the patient but to relieve pain. However this may be argued that this is nothing but a prolonged method of euthanasia. The main aim in the practise of euthanasia is to end the physical pain and suffering of the terminally ill patient, like palliative care although the end result which is death is more immediate when practising euthanasia.
The use of palliative care, passive and active euthanasia in my opinion should be treated equally in the eyes of the law. The legalisation of active euthanasia is most logical step in addressing a terminally ill individuals’ choice regarding a dignified death, as well as what seems to be the laws double standards and unfair-discrimination regarding the choice of dying when an individual’s life may be interrupted and when terminally