Euthanasia Science and Technology Has Allowed Humans

Euthanasia Science and technology has allowed humans to treat a myriad of diseases that were previously terminal. This is no longer a question of whether prolonging life is possible. Instead, physicians and scientists must grapple with a more difficult dilemma - whether life should be artificially prolonged in the first place. Despite the passing of the Physician Assisted Law (PAS) in Oregon and the legality of assisted suicide in the Netherlands, people generally frame euthanasia as a moral instead of a legal issue.

Terry Golway, frames the issue in its larger effects of society. Euthanasia threatens the current way of life of people of are "God fearing and life-affirming" (629). It threatens to erode the respect and compassion traditionally accorded to the elderly, who are now merely "people who want to be gotten rid of" (629). Furthermore, together with abortion, the growing acceptance of euthanasia brings the United States closer to "a culture of death" (630). On a dramatic note, he even takes these as "signs that the forces of darkness are gathering" (631).

Golway's comments regarding "a culture of death" and threats to the "God fearing and life-affirming" peoples reveal an implicit intolerance of any contradicting views. He fails to address how euthanasia is often prompted by compassion, that not every "church-going American" equates assisted suicide with "ridding themselves of the old and the handicapped" (629). Golway's account also fails to address how euthanasia affects individuals, particularly the old and the handicapped whose interests he supposedly upholds.

Instead, Golway simply frames the issue in stark absolutes, that all forms of killing and murder are wrong, regardless of method and motive. Ellen Goodman tries to address both moral and individual questions by looking at the cases of Earle Spring and Karen Ann Quinlan. For Goodman, the morality of euthanasia springs from individual free will. While Quinlan's brain death precluded her from having a will to live, Spring presented a more difficult gray area.

Despite Spring's supposed senility and his reliance on a dialysis machine, a physician and a nurse testified that Spring made "a weak expression of his desire to live" (Goodman 627). Though she mentions the financial and emotional toll on the Spring family, Goodman thus concludes that Spring must be given "the benefit of the doubt" (628). Unlike Golway, Goodman does not believe in moral absolutes, particularly in questions like euthanasia.

Though the position may seem vacillating, it also allows her to look at individual interests and to discern the moral nuances of euthanasia. Thus, she partly agrees with Golway in that euthanasia is forcing a change in the way society allocates resources for treatment. However, she stops short of Golway's value judgments. Golway and Goodman's differing positions stem not only from different political stands, but different ethical precepts. At issue is what Ronald Dworkin terms people's belief in "the sanctity of life," a multidimensional value measured in several factors.

First, life itself has an instrumental value, because everyone's life can contribute to the interests and well being of society as a whole. Second, life has a personal value, a good or personal worth to the living individual. Finally, beyond the instrumental and personal, life also has an intrinsic value. This intrinsic value exists independently of other people's valuation, regardless of the beliefs of its possessor or other observers (McMahan, 330).