14 DAY TRIAL // New research seems to indicate the fact that doctors and other health care personnel in the United Kingdom strongly oppose legalizing euthanasia in public facilities. They say that's immoral to do this, even though proponents of the measure state that, for terminally ill patients who wish it, the possibility should exist. This is an issue that is bound to give birth to numerous controversies, between adepts of choice, and those of ethics.
One of the main things the UK physician associations strongly disapprove of is doctor-assisted euthanasia. In other words, they do not want to take the life of another human being, even if they are allowed or even encouraged to do so by the law. Objectively speaking, this would, indeed, be a violation of the Hippocratic oath, the pledge that the health care personnel take to always place the interest of the patient first.
“Frequency of treating patients who die is not independently associated with attitudes. Many doctors supporting legalization also express reservations and advocate safeguards; many doctors opposing legalization believe and accept that treatment and non-treatment decisions may shorten life. It is hoped that future debates about legalization can proceed with this evidence in mind,” Queen Mary University in London (CMU) Center for Health Science expert professor Clive Seale shares.
He also says that another important reason why some physicians strongly oppose such legislation is their individual religious belief. Most religions prevent their followers from willingly killing another human being, values that can be found in Buddhism, Christianity, and the Islam as well.
“The results show that deaths in the UK are particularly likely to involve continuous deep sedation. This may be a cause for concern if interpretations of this as 'slow euthanasia' are to be avoided. A better understanding of the context in which these decisions are taken is needed to assess this,” the conclusion of a study conducted on 3,733 UK medical practitioners shows. Nine in ten of them replied that the decisions they made, to not treat the patients who were terminally-ill, did not result in the latter losing their life sooner than they would otherwise. Date came, on average, 24 hours ahead of “time.”