PHI1630 Contemporary Ethical Problems - Shanghai Summer 2019

page 472, animals do not have rights.
I think animals do have rights. By Huff’s argument, because animals do not have rationality and the ability to communicate, so they are different from human and  thus the use of laboratory animals raises no serious moral questions. It is morally important to respect life. Like our human, animals have life. Our moral standard is not allowed to treat life cruelly. Laboratory animals may be tortured and abused if people think animals have no rights. Even they are not as intelligent as human, they still can feel pain and the earth is their home as well. It is true that animals can’t share the same rights as human. However, any living, breathing creature has some form of basic rights. If so, human can not harm them as cruel as they want to because they have basic rights. However, the killing or harm of animals may be ethically acceptable only when there are no reasonable alternatives. For example, an animal is suffering a incurably ill or infected by flu. In conclusion, animals do have some basic rights.

“In order to state the argument of the opponent of assisted suicide and euthanasia in its strongest form and to avoid unnecessary complexity in exposition, I shall focus in this section on euthanasia. The claim that any individual instance of euthanasia is a case of deliberate killing of an innocent person is, with only minor qualifications, correct. Unlike forgoing life-sustaining treatment, commonly understood as allowing to die, euthanasia is clearly killing,understood as depriving of life or causing the death of a living being. While providing morphine for pain relief at doses where the risk of respiratory depression and an earlier death may be a foreseen but unintended side effect of treating the patient's pain, in a case of euthanasia the patient's death is deliberate or intended even if in both the physician's ultimate end may be respecting the patient's wishes If the deliberate killing of an innocent person is wrong,euthanasia would be nearly always impermissible.
In the context of medicine, the ethical prohibition against deliberately killing the innocent derives some of its plausibility from the belief that nothing in the currently accepted practice of medicine is deliberate killing. thus, in commenting on the It's Over Debbie"case in which a resident deliberately gave a patient a lethal dose of morphine, four prominent physicians and bioethicists, led by Willard Gaylin, could entitle their paper "Doctors Must No Kill. The belief that doctors do not kill requires the corollary belief that forgoing life-sustaining treatment, whether by not starting or by stopping treatment, is allowing to die, not killing. Common though this view is, I shall argue that it is confused and mistaken. Typical cases of stopping life-sustaining treatment are killing, not allowing to die, although they are cases of ethically justified killing. But if so, that shows that an unqualified ethical prohibition of the deliberate killing of innocent persons is indefensible and must be revised.” Page 194, “assisted suicide and euthanasia are deliberate killing of an innocent person.”


Comment:
The writer claims “euthanasia is clearly killing, understood as depriving of life or causing the death of a living being”. He stands for the argument that euthanasia is deliberate killing of an innocent person. Life is not so sacred that it must never be taken. It depends on different situation. If a patient get a unbearable suffering from a terminally ill, and he can't live for a long time because it is incurable. He would like to choose euthanasia, then euthanasia is not killing but an act or method to end suffering painlessly. This is the patient’s own will. If euthanasia is not permitted by the patient, then it is not right. It also allows the patient to retain their dignity. It gives greater weight to respecting the patient’s right of control or self-determination regarding his or her own life. Last year, a famous host in Tai Wan choose to end his life by euthanasia. He asked both his families and doctors’ permission. Then he drink the medicine with his families company and died in peace. This news triggers a lot of attention in Tai Wan’s society, got supporting from many people. It shows that people have a great understanding on euthanasia. The host can't afford the suffering and the huge money of medical care, and his ill is incurable, so his family respected his decision to end his pain by his own willing.
The writer also mentioned the case of “It’s over Debbie”. A resident deliberately gave a patient a lethal dose of morphine which caused death of Debbie. Using morphine is moral if the aim of this resident is reliving the girl’s pain. But he knew that over dose of morphine will cause death, it is killing on purpose and against the girl’s will. Also her ill is curable. It’s murder, not euthanasia.
In the case of euthanasia, the choice rests fully with the patients and it will not take place without patients desire. But in the case of Debbie, she didn't choose euthanasia and she wasn’t told the truth.