" This action according to Humphrey allows personal responsibility for family decision making to be broadened to a reasonable level.
Humphrey also lays strong claims for the medical responsibilities of euthanasia because of the overemphasis on life-support to prolong human suffering rather than allow certain and peaceful death. Humphrey's believes that the medical community needs be an example to individuals by stopping making decisions for the family based on technological progress of aggressive treatments. "People dread having their loved ones put on such equipment if it means they are never likely to be removed if that proves later to be the mores sensible coarse." (155) in short, Humphries contends that passive euthanasia is a personal and private responsibility and that the medical responsibility lies in stepping back and allowing individuals to make such decisions without fear of reprisal.
Ledermans's more personal account is of herself having to make decisions for a loved one, when that loved one, her 90-year-old grandmother was not able to make them herself. Her stand is one of waning the medical community to see, compassionately how difficult it is to follow the wishes of a loved, one, even when they are known. It is the expression fo a personal struggle to let her grandmother's wishes be achieved, never to go to a nursing home, be experimented on or become dependant on others for care. Her example is one that pits her against the medical community, who is programmed to keep her grandmother alive "The doctor's wanted desperately to save her; that's what doctors are...
To deal with the bleeding, they performed an endoscopy...when that didn't work they wanted to do another. I said enough."
Lederman's view on medical responsibility is that they should allow the individual and family to make decisions that are right for them, and do so with compassion, rather than extreme coarseness. One example she gives is of the manner in which she was spoken to when she started to resist treatment for her grandmother. They asked her questions like; "How can you let her bleed to death?" A guilt driven approach to manipulating individual decisions. In short Lederman contends that personal responsibilities to make decisions regarding euthanasia are difficult enough and that the medical responsibilities need to be kept in check, within a compassionate reality.
In closing this work describes three individual ideas of both medical and individual responsibility that reflect that there is a middle ground. The three contend, even though they disagree on the details that palliative and compassionate care needs to be the focus of the this process of dying. All people die, but must they feel guilty about it? This topic will likely be debated long into the future, especially as technology for advanced and aggressive medical care continues to "improve." Debates are truly as universal as the concepts of "life" and "death" yet it is also clear that in the middle, where most people lie on the subject there needs to be a reevaluation of the import of dignity, and this means dignity as it is defined by the dying individual and his or her loved ones.
