Book Title: Whether Soul Super Soul Evil Soul Exists
Author(s): Suvarna Jain
Publisher: Suvarna Jain

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Page 131
________________ patients dignity & maintaining it insults that dignity, proper respect for the patient & the patients best interests requires that life be brought to an end. Life is terminated on ground that it would be better for him doing so would be beneficial by alleviating human suffering or burdens whether proposal arises within or outside the context of medical care. Select committee on medical ethics-unanimously rejected any proposal to cross the line which prohibits any intentional killing which we think it essential to preserve. 1. Prohibition of intentional killing is corner stone of law & social relations. 2. Understanding of nature & importance of intention rightness or wrongness of administering analgesics or sedatives in the knowledge that dose will be both to reliese pain & to shorten life depends not upon the intention with which the medication is admistered & only upon the comparative value of the respective outcomes. The professional judgement of the health care team can be exercised to enable increasing doses of medication to be given in order to provide relief even if this shortens life. In some cases patients may in consequence die sooner than they would otherwise have died, this is not the view a reason for withholding treatment that would give relief. The doctor's intention & evaluation of the pain & distress suffered by the patient are of crucial significance in judging double effect. If this intention is the relief of pain or 'severe distress of treatment given is appropriate to that end, then the possible double effect should be no obstacle to such treatment being given choosing to kill with drugs in order to relieve than of their pain & suffering & choosing to kill someone of their pain & by giving drugs in a dosage determined by the drugs capacity for the pain relief forseeing that the drug in the dosage will cause death in 3 days. The former choice is legally & morally murder in mitigating circumstances. Latter may still legally culpable not by virtue moral & legal norm which excludes intentionally terminating life. Distinction between what is intended as means or end & what is accepted as a side effect don't depend upon whether side effect is desired or undesired, welcomed or accepted with reluctance someone welcomes death as it involves as end to misery or is envisaged as the gate of heaven what one intends / What one accepts there is free choice. Real problem of euthanasia is the tragedy of the prematured & unwanted deaths of thousands in every society who die for medical 126 Jain Education International For Personal & Private Use Only www.jainelibrary.org

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