Euthanasia: Its Legal Status

Abstract

Abstract

According to Oxford English Dictionary, Euthansia means the painless killing of a patient suffering from an incurable and painful disease or a person who is in irreversible coma. Euthansia is described as the deliberate and interstitial killing of a person for the benefit of that person in order to relive him from pain and suffering. According to the British House of Lords Select committee on Medical Ethics, it is defined as a deliberate intervention undertaken with the expressed intention of ending a life, to relive intractable suffering. Euthansia has been rejected by doctors since the fifth century BC when physicians first took oath of Hippocrates and swore to give no deadly medicine. Even back to the history, one may argue that the Nazi extermination program is a recent and terrible example of what can happen once we give the state the power to kill innocent human beings. Peter Singer, an ethical thinker of modern times, though felt the strength of the argument and in some sense held the view that this is not something to be regarded with horror, and the use of Nazi