“I will give no deadly medicine to anyone if asked, nor suggest any such counsel” stated in the Hippocratic Oath, taken by physicians and other healthcare professionals across the world (Davey 2). With that in mind, should a person be allowed to decide when to die, with the aid of euthanasia? Daniel Callahan argues, in his article titled “When Self-Determination Runs Amok”, that a person should not be entitled to euthanasia (Callahan). Euthanasia does offer a painless death; however, physicians should not practice euthanasia because they would have too much power in their own hands and proper palliative care makes the practice unnecessary.
Callahan believes that euthanasia would be another excuse for society to partake in killing. He…show more content… The first category being self- determination, argues that people should be able to decide what deems their own life as being “good”. Callahan argues that euthanasia requires more than one individual, therefore, making it more than just self-determination but rather agreement between the physician and the patient. He believes that no individual should have so much power, when regarding another individual’s life. The second category explores the difference between killing and allowing to die. Most individuals in favor of euthanasia believe that there is no moral distinction between the two; however, Callahan strongly disagrees. A lethal injection would kill a patient relying on a ventilator and even kill a healthy patient; on the other hand, removing a healthy patient from a ventilator would due no harm,…show more content… Physicians are human beings, just like everyone else, and can be lazy or selfish at any moment in time. I’m not saying that all physicians would use euthanasia to free up their staff, to care for another patient that has a more “valuable” life, but giving them access to that privilege should not even be an option. Considering that even the finest physicians in the world make mistakes and misdiagnosis patients. How confident would a physician have to be that a patient has a terminal prognosis, or only has a few months to live? If the physician were found to be wrong after performing euthanasia, it would be too late. The patient would be no different than an innocent individual that was sentenced to death, via lethal