Word: heroic
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PASSIVE EUTHANASIA is not considered murder by the U.S. legal system and in fact is practiced every day in hospitals all over the country. Usually it involves withholding drugs, treatments or heroic measures which, in the opinion of the doctor and the patient's family, merely prolong suffering and the patient's inevitable death...
...complicated for physicians, as a result of the tremendous gains in medical science's ability to significantly prolong the lives of many "terminal" patients. Today, more and more doctors must decide when it is no longer worthwhile to attempt to keep a patient alive by further treatment or heroic measures...
...everything within reason to beat those odds. And he must further decide whether the patient has the right or the proper outlook to demand an end to his suffering. In some cases the agony is so severe and the prognosis so hopeless that there is little question that heroic measures to prolong the patient's life should not be employed. But many times the line between hope and hopelessness is a fuzzy one, and the problems of who is to draw it and on what basis remain unresolved...
Over 40,000 people have signed the "living wills," which tell doctors that "if there is no expectation of my recovery from physical or mental disability, I request that I be allowed to die and not be kept alive by artificial or heroic measures." Although these wills help alleviate the burden of deciding exactly what the patient desires, physicians must still take it upon themselves to interpret the "expectation of recovery...
ALMOST ALL of the doctors I talked to felt very strongly that a patient has the right to request that doctors take steps to terminate their pain and that a doctor should accede to a patient's wish not to be kept alive by unnecessary or heroic means. Most agree that just as in the area of abortion, it is clear that it is no longer a matter of continuing without guidelines for doctors to base their decisions on. The ethical and legal considerations surrounding euthanasia are far too serious, and too little exploration of them has taken place...