Introduction

Hebrews 9:27 reads in part: “… it is appointed for mortals to die …” Let me rewrite the passage so it hits home. Let’s strike out “mortals” Let’s jot instead “Nicholas.” “It is appointed for Nicholas to die…” As to the type of death that awaits me, I am not privy. That knowledge belongs only to the gods. What is clear though, is that none of us is exempt from any particular type of death. It could be a “Tim Russert” (of NBC)-like death. You could even find yourself in a “Schiavo”-like situation. A “Russert”-like death sparks no moral issues. A “schiavo”-like situation is another story altogether. Terry’s death was a classic example of Euthanasia

Definition of Euthanasia

The etymological building blocks of the term are: “Eu” (=a Greek adverb that means “well.” “easy,” “good”) and “thanatos” (=meaning “death”). Combining the two terms yields the compound idea of “easy death,” “dying well,” or “death by dignity.”

Types of Euthanasia

Type # 1: Active voluntary Euthanasia (AVE)

(a) Definition

Doctors or others directly end a consenting patient’s suffering through medically administered lethal drugs

(b) Example
(i) The Oregon Death by Dignity Act
First passed by Oreginians in Nov 1994 and activated after an injunction was lifted by the ninth circuit of Appeals on Oct 1997, the Oregon Death by Dignity Act allows a doctor to prescribe pentonarbital or secorbabrbital,both of which are lethal medication to a terminally ill patient of sound mind. The patient then goes ahead and ingests the lethal drugs at a place and time of his or her own choosing. In 2004, 40 physicians wrote a total of 60 prescriptions. Thirty five patients who ingested the drugs died. The range of time from ingestion to death was 5 minutes to 31 hours
(ii) The infamous Kervokian
Sunday night Nov 22, 1998, 60 minutes viewers were treated to a never-before-seen telecast. There in the sight of all was Kervokian administering lethal injection to a consenting Thomas Youk, a victim of amytophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s disease. For that Kervokian was slapped with a second degree murder charge and received a 10-25 yrs sentence. Prior to this particular AVE, Kervokian had played an assistive role in other deaths ranging back to 1990.

–June 4 1990: Janet Adkins,a 54 yr old woman with Alzheimer used a suicide machine that Kervokian himself had deviced. She died inside Kervokians’s 1968 volkwagen
–Oct 23 1991: Kervokian supervised the simultaneous death of two women. One, Marjorie Wanz, 58 yr old with pelvic pain used Kervokians suicide machine. The other, Sherry Miller, 43 yrs old with multiple sclerosis inhaled carbon monoxide through a face mask
–Sept 26th 1992, Lois Hawes,52 yrs old with lung and brain cancer, died from CO poisoning at the home of Kervokian’s assistant
–Kervokian himself may have been present on Nov 26th 1994 during the death by CO poisoning of 72 yr old Margaret Garrish who had arthritis and osteoporosis

(c) Reason
The main reason seems to be the desire to bring about the cessation of suffering

Type # 2: Active Involuntary Euthanasia (AIE)

(a) Definition
A doctor or a non-doctor directly ending a non-consenting patient’s suffering through lethal means

(b) Example
(i) On 30th sept 1949 Carol Paight, a 20yr old Connecticut college student, shot her 52 yr old father while he lay unconscious in a hospital bed after exploratory surgery. She was reported to have said just before the shooting that she had to do something to keep her father from knowing that he had only six painful weeks to live.

(ii) On Feb 15th 1993 Kervokian oversaw the death of Hugh Gale, a 70 yr old man with emphysema and congestive heart failure. Why this would be an example of involuntary euthanasia is because the prosecutors investigating the case were able to prove that Kervokian had altered his written account of Gale’s death by deleting a reference to a request by Gale that the procedure be halted

Type # 3: Passive voluntary Euthanasia (PVE)

(a) Definition
Withholding unwanted or extraordinary treatment as per the patient

(b) Example
(i) Nancy Cruzan
One night in 1983, th car of the 25 yr old slid off an icy Missouri Road. The ensuing crash threw her out of the car and left her breathless and without a pulse. Minutes later, paramedics revived her heartbeat and respiration, but Cruzan never regained consciousness. She spent the next 7 yrs of her life in a permanent vegetative state, able to breath but kept alive by a feeding tube
Her parents wished that her feeding tube be removed. After a court battle and appeals to higher courts, the parents wishes were honored on the strength that she had made prior wishes to die if ever she found herself in that situation
(ii) Terry Schiavo
(iii) Pope Pius XII
In an Oct 24th Feb 1975 speech before an international gathering of anaesthesiologists he announced (1) that patients could refuse extraordinary treatment to prolong their lives without violating Christian teaching (2)that that there was no reason that dying persons should endure unusual pain; physicians, he stated were permitted to use pain relievers even if they shortened a dying patient’s life, though doctors should never administer pain-killing drugs against someone’s will or with the intention of killing a patientpassive euthanasia was permissible,
(iv)Living wills
Advanced directives written by individuals specifying under what conditions treatment would be withheld (state legalized). In 1976 Califonia becamethe first state to recognize the living will; by 1986 all but eleven states had done the same

(c) Reasons
Curtail pain, curtail an unproductive and worthless living

Type # 4: Passive involuntary Euthanasia (PIE)

(a) Definition
Withholding unwanted or extraordinary treatment without the patient’s consent

(b) Examples
(i) Karen Ann Quinlan
Lapsed, at 21 yrs, into an irreversible coma On 14th April 1974 while at a party in suburban New Jersey, possibly because she had been mixing alcohol and the tranquilizer Valium. Taken to hospital, she was hooked up to a respirator and tubes providing her with hydration and nutrition. [she was far from legally dead; she responded to pain and noise and withdrew her limbs when they stroked]. When she persisted in her vegetative state for months, her parents went to court to have her taken off the respirator. They eventually succeeded in March 1976, but Quinlan, even after being detached from a respirator, lived for another nine years until she died of pneumonia in 1985
The court decision stated in part that Karen’s right to privacy may be asserted on her own behalf by her guardian in circumstances when she had never signed a living will nor made her end-of-life wishes known clearly
(ii) Knya Dismuke-Howard
Knya, a terminally ill six-month old infant at the center of a life-support fight died Wednesday May 4th 2005, while still receiving medical treatment. Knya had leukemia that spread to her brain. Doctors at Memorial Hermann Hospital had said continued care would be futile, and a hospital ethic committee decided to remove her from life support, despite objections from her parents
(iii) Texas state law passed in 1999 gives hospitals the authority to remove patients from life support, but requires they give the family 10 days notice to find another facility
(iv) Polls
Polls in the 1960’s showed that from 60-80 percent of American doctors let some of their patients die by withholding or withdrawing treatment

(c) Reasons
Bring pain to an end; futile treatment

Scriptures to bring to bear in evaluating the different types of Euthanasia

Passages Pertaining to murder
–Exod 21:12: Whoever strikes a person mortally shall be put to death
–Ex. 21:20: When a slaveowner strikes a male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies immediately, the owner shall be punished
–Lev 24:17: Anyone who kills a human being shall be put to death
–Num 35:16: But anyone who strikes another with an iron object, and death ensues, is a murderer; the murderer shall be put to death
–Exod 20:13: You shall not murde
–Gen 9:5, 6: For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life. Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.

Passages Pertaining to Suicide
–Judg. 16:30, 31: Then Samson said, “Let me die with the Philistines.” He strained with all his might; and the house fell on the lords and all the people who were in it. So those he killed at his death were more than those he had killed during his life. Then his brothers and all his family came down and took him and brought him up and buried him between Zorah and Eshtaol in the tomb of his father Manoah. He had judged Israel twenty years.
–1Sam. 31:4, 5, 6 Then Saul said to his armor-bearer, “Draw your sword and thrust me through with it, so that these uncircumcised may not come and thrust me through, and make sport of me.” But his armor-bearer was unwilling; for he was terrified. So Saul took his own sword and fell upon it. When his armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he also fell upon his sword and died with him. So Saul and his three sons and his armor-bearer and all his men died together on the same day.
–2Sam. 17:14, 23 Absalom and all the men of Israel said, “The counsel of Hushai the Archite is better than the counsel of Ahithophel.” For the LORD had ordained to defeat the good counsel of Ahithophel, so that the LORD might bring ruin on Absalom. When Ahithophel saw that his counsel was not followed, he saddled his donkey and went off home to his own city. He set his house in order, and hanged himself; he died and was buried in the tomb of his father.
–Matt. 27:5: Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself.
–Acts 16:27: When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped.
–Acts 16:28, 29: But Paul shouted in a loud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas.
–We are supposed to wait of death, not hasten or even activate it (cf Gen 27:2)
–Elisha had a teminalillness and did not kill himself (2 Kings 13:14)

Passages Pertaining to Assisted (desire for or rejection of assisted) suicide
–Judg. 9:52-57: Abimelech came to the tower, and fought against it, and came near to the entrance of the tower to burn it with fire. But a certain woman threw an upper millstone on Abimelech’s head, and crushed his skull. Immediately he called to the young man who carried his armor and said to him, “Draw your sword and kill me, so people will not say about me, ‘A woman killed him.’” So the young man thrust him through, and he died. When the Israelites saw that Abimelech was dead, they all went home. Thus God repaid Abimelech for the crime he committed against his father in killing his seventy brothers; and God also made all the wickedness of the people of Shechem fall back on their heads, and on them came the curse of Jotham son of Jerubbaal.
–2Sam. 1:9, 10: He said to me, ‘Come, stand over me and kill me; for convulsions have seized me, and yet my life still lingers.’ So I stood over him, and killed him, for I knew that he could not live after he had fallen. I took the crown that was on his head and the armlet that was on his arm, and I have brought them here to my lord.
–1Kings 19:1-4: Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and how he had killed all the prophets with the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger to Elijah, saying, “So may the gods do to me, and more also, if I do not make your life like the life of one of them by this time tomorrow.” Then he was afraid; he got up and fled for his life, and came to Beer-sheba, which belongs to Judah; he left his servant there. But he himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.
–Jonah 4: 2-8: But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the LORD and said, “O LORD! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the LORD said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.”
–Job 3:20: “Why is light given to one in misery, and life to the bitter in soul, who long for death, but it does not come, and dig for it more than for hidden treasures.
–Job 2:9-10: Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would gspeak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.