Of Mice and Men. Euthanasia Synthesis

Transcription

1 Of Mice and Men Euthanasia Synthesis As you should know by now, Of Mice and Men ends with George killing Lennie. One justification hinted at in the novel centers on mercy: George kills his friend in order to spare Lennie a more gruesome and painful death at the hands of Curley and the other ranchers. In other words, Lennie s death is a form of euthanasia, or mercy killing. But euthanasia, like gun control and global warming, is a controversial and arguable issue. So, while we, as readers, cannot change George s decision, we can argue for the morality of that decision. We can and have to decide whether George was right to kill Lennie. In order to do this, you will join the conversation about euthanasia. In Lennie s case, we are dealing with a specific type of euthanasia, non-voluntary euthanasia. For this assignment, you will construct an essay that uses your argument, the arguments of others, and textual evidence from Of Mice and Men to condemn or confirm George s decision to kill Lennie. Essential Question: Is George justified in killing Lennie, or does his decision amount to murder? Essay Content Requirements: Introduction with a clear, arguable thesis statement Body paragraphs that are logically structured Cited analyzed evidence from... Of Mice and Men A fellow classmate One of the sources provided Essay Format Requirements: 2 pages minimum, double-spaced MLA heading on first page Original title MLA format for in-text citations

2 Source A The following is a definition of non-voluntary euthanasia from The BBC website's Religion and Ethics : Non-voluntary euthanasia: The person cannot make a decision or cannot make their wishes known. This includes cases where: the person is in a coma the person is too young (e.g. a very young baby) the person is senile the person is mentally retarded to a very severe extent the person is severely brain damaged the person is mentally disturbed in such a way that they should be protected from themselves

3 Source B The following is from Dr. Eduard Verhagen, Neonatologist and Clinical Director of Pediatrics in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Groningen and Dr. Pieter J. J. Sauer, Chairman and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics /Beatrix Children's Hospital, University Medical Center Groningen, offering background on the Netherlands Groningen Protocol: Newborns... however, cannot ask for euthanasia, and such a request by parents, acting as the representatives of their child, is invalid under Dutch law. Does this mean that euthanasia in a newborn is always prohibited? We are convinced that life-ending measures can be acceptable in these cases under very strict conditions: the parents must agree fully, on the basis of a thorough explanation of the condition and prognosis; a team of physicians, including at least one who is not directly involved in the care of the patient, must agree; and the condition and prognosis must be very well defined. After the decision has been made and the child has died, an outside legal body should determine whether the decision was justified and all necessary procedures have been followed... [We] developed a protocol in 2002, in close collaboration with a district attorney. The protocol contains general guidelines and specific requirements related to the decision about euthanasia and its implementation. Five medical requirements must be fulfilled; other criteria are supportive, designed to clarify the decision and facilitate assessment. Following the protocol does not guarantee that the physician will not be prosecuted. Since implementing this protocol, our group has reported four cases in which we performed a deliberate life-ending procedure in a newborn. None have resulted in prosecution. Dilemmas regarding end-of-life decisions for newborns with a very poor quality of life and presumably unbearable suffering and no hope of improvement are shared by physicians throughout the world. In the Netherlands, obligatory reporting with the aid of a protocol and subsequent assessment of euthanasia in newborns help us to clarify the decision-making process. This approach suits our legal and social culture, but it is unclear to what extent it would be transferable to other countries... Requirements of the Groningen Protocol that must be fulfilled: The diagnosis and prognosis must be certain Hopeless and unbearable suffering must be present The diagnosis, prognosis, and unbearable suffering must be confirmed by at least one independent doctor Both parents must give informed consent The procedure must be performed in accordance with the accepted medical standard.

4 Source C The following is from The BBC s Religion & Ethics section of its website, in an entry titled "The Doctrine of Double Effect": "This doctrine [of double effect] says that if doing something morally good has a morally bad side-effect it's ethically OK to do it providing the bad side-effect wasn't intended. This is true even if you foresaw that the bad effect would probably happen. The principle is used to justify the case where a doctor gives drugs to a patient to relieve distressing symptoms even though he knows doing this may shorten the patient's life. This is because the doctor is not aiming directly at killing the patient - the bad result of the patient's death is a side-effect of the good result of reducing the patient's pain. Many doctors use this doctrine to justify the use of high doses of drugs such as morphine for the purpose of relieving suffering in terminally-ill patients even though they know the drugs are likely to cause the patient to die sooner. Factors involved in the doctrine of double effect: The good result must be achieved independently of the bad one: For the doctrine to apply, the bad result must not be the means of achieving the good one. So if the only way the drug relieves the patient's pain is by killing him, the doctrine of double effect doesn't apply. The action must be proportional to the cause: If I give a patient a dose of drugs so large that it is certain to kill them, and that is also far greater than the dose needed to control their pain, I can't use the Doctrine of Double Effect to say that what I did was right. The action must be appropriate (a): I also have to give the patient the right medicine. If I give the patient a fatal dose of pain-killing drugs, it's no use saying that my intention was to relieve their symptoms of vomiting if the drug doesn't have any effect on vomiting. The action must be appropriate (b): I also have to give the patient the right medicine for their symptoms. If I give the patient a fatal dose of pain-killing drugs, it's no use saying that my intention was to relieve their symptoms of pain if the patient wasn't suffering from pain but from breathlessness. The patient must be in a terminal condition: If I give the patient a fatal dose of pain-killing drugs and they would have recovered from their disease or injury if I hadn't given them the drugs, it's no use saying that my intention was to relieve their pain. And that applies even if there was no other way of controlling their pain."

5 Source D The following is by Timothy Quill, MD, Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester, explaining the legal complexities underlying the Terri Schiavo: "In 2002, the Florida trial court judge conducted six days of evidentiary hearings on Ms. Schiavo's condition, including evaluations by four neurologists, one radiologist, and her attending physician... The trial court judge ruled that the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state met the legal standard of 'clear and convincing' evidence, and this decision was reviewed and upheld by the Florida Second District Court of Appeal. Subsequent appeals to the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court were denied a hearing. So what was known about Terri Schiavo's wishes and values? Since she unfortunately left no written advance directive, the next step would be to meet with her closest family members and try to understand what she would have wanted under these medical circumstances if she could have spoken for herself, drawing on the principle of 'substituted judgment'... Here Ms. Schiavo's story gets more complex. Michael Schiavo was made her legal guardian under Florida law, which designates the spouse as the decision maker above other family members if a patient becomes irreversibly incapacitated and has not designated a health care proxy. After three years of trying traditional and experimental therapies, Mr. Schiavo accepted the neurologists' diagnosis of an irreversible persistent vegetative state. He believed that his wife would not want to be kept alive indefinitely in her condition, recalling prior statements that she had made, such as 'I don't want to be kept alive on a machine.' The Schindler family, however, did not accept the diagnosis of a persistent vegetative state, believing instead that Ms. Schiavo's condition could improve with additional rehabilitative treatment... The right of competent patients to refuse unwanted medical treatment, including artificial hydration and nutrition, is a settled ethical and legal issue in this country based on the right to bodily integrity... The Schiavo case raises... challenging questions about how to define family and how to proceed if members of the immediate family are not in agreement. The relevant Florida statute requires 'clear and convincing evidence that the decision would have been the one the patient would have chosen had the patient been competent or, if there is no indication of what the patient would have chosen, that the decision is in the patient's best interest.' Since there is no societal consensus about whether a feeding tube is in the 'best interest' of a patient in a persistent vegetative state, the main legal question to be addressed was that of Terri Schiavo's wishes."