The Goals of Medicine and Compassion in the Ethical Assessment of Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: Relieving Pain and Suffering by Protecting, Promoting, and Maintaining the Person’s Well-Being

Abstract

Arguments regarding the goals of medicine in end-of-life occupy a prominent place in the debate on life-ending medical interventions. The discussions in favor of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide focus on relieving patients’ intractable pain and suffering to justify the physician's active engagement in killing. Furthermore, the arguments that claim the existence of intractable suffering vindicates euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide are predicated upon compassion in the first instance. The present article concisely studies the goals of medicine and compassion to evaluate their utilization in the ethical justification of life-ending interventions to draw normative conclusions on that basis. The article concludes that relieving a person's unbearable pain and suffering is a crucial goal of medicine, but this goal should be accomplished through morally acceptable means, not euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. Medicine intends to protect, promote, and maintain the person's physical and psychological wellbeing. Considering euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide an appropriate means to achieve these goals may dramatically impair the therapeutic relationship for patients who regard the physician as a healer. In respect of compassion, the article deduces that even though playing an important role in the patient-physician relationship, compassion does not produce an objective, reliable, and applicable standard to appraise the ethical assessment of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide because compassion derives from feelings that vary from person to person according to their social, cultural, religious, or political stances and values. The article proposes interpreting the goals of medicine and the concept of compassion in line with giving suffering people adequate and appropriate medical, palliative, spiritual, and emotional care in light of the dedication of medicine to people's health and welfare and the requirement of compassion to help suffering individuals in a constructive course of action.