Name: Ahmed Peracha

ERP ID: 24898

Euthanasia is defined by Marriam-Webster as “the act or practice of killing or permitting the death of
hopelessly sick or injured individuals (such as persons or domestic animals) in a relatively painless way
for reasons of mercy”. There are two types of euthanasia: Active euthanasia and passive euthanasia.

Active euthanasia is where euthanasia is committed with the requirement of the patient’s verbal
consent whereas passive euthanasia doesn’t require a patient’s verbal consent. I believe that active
euthanasia is mercy killing while passive euthanasia is murder.

In my opinion, consent is very important in this matter since it’s the patients’ ultimate decision and
cannot be taken either by the doctors or patients’ family and friends. In passive euthanasia, a patient
has not given verbal consent to have their life ended thus, it should not be considered mercy killing
rather, murder.

Active euthanasia with doctor’s advice is the best way to go with mercy killing since you’re taking the
patient’s wishes and a doctor’s advice in order. For example, a depression patient is in a lot of pain
mentally and they ask their family members to end their life, to end their pain. In this situation, usually a
doctor will say that the patient has higher chances of living and it is unwise to end their life. Considering
all the above information, I think it would be more of a mercy to let the patient live and push through all
this pain and in this situation, euthanasia should be considered murder and not a mercy. This is because
the patient had chances of surviving and could’ve lived thus, ending their life is just cruel.

Let’s take a look at another example: A 70-year-old or so man has cancer, he is living with the aid of
ventilators and the doctors are saying that his chances to live are little to none. Considering the patients
situation, if they ask for an end to this pain, I believe that it would be mercy to end their life and put
them to peace. I believe that because it can be clearly seen that this patient was living because of the
ventilators, thus they were trying to extend his life span and without a ventilator he would’ve died thus
euthanasia should be considered mercy killing and not murder.

Here’s one last example: An old woman is in a coma and has not woken up in the past five months. Her
family members and their friends decide that the woman is in a lot of pain and it would be better if they
ended her life. This is very wrong in my opinion since the woman has not given verbal consent and there
are a lot of cases where people do wake up from comas thus, it would be straight up murder if they
were to kill this woman. In many passive euthanasia cases, people kill their parents or grandparents in
order to get their share from the will. With that, it can be considered that some passive euthanasia
cases might be planned out by their family members!

To sum it up in a few words, I believe that active euthanasia should be allowed with respect to doctor’s
advice and should be considered mercy killing and not murder. Whereas passive euthanasia or active
euthanasia without doctor’s vote of confidence should be considered murder and should not be
allowed.