Abstract

At the outset my paper is intended to discuss the concept of ‘Euthanasia’ especially in the light of ‘beneficence’. The concept of benefit or beneficence here is to unpack the act of doing good or to benefit others. The act of doing good is to flesh out the underlying concept of not doing harm to the patients throughout their treatment time. The term ‘benefit’ mentioned in my paper attempts to espouse the important concepts in the field of medical ethics and envisages the rules and principles followed according to the prescribed duty of the physician. Benefit of the patient is one of the moral maxims that have to be followed right from the maxims of the Hippocratic Oath which is an imperative in the field of medical profession. Accordingly, physician’s important duty is to give maximum benefit to their patients; such as saving life, prolonged life and death. The point is in the lines of the philosopher Hippocrates where he mentions the duty of the physician, “to come for the benefit to the sick”13. In the normal paradigm professionals entering in the field of medical science have the responsibility to prevent harm and promote good to his/her patients. Hence, the professionals in the concerning field presume that they are working apriori on the principles of Hippocrates in promoting the benefit and the interest of the patients. There is always a cursory of anomaly involved in questioning the chastity of the physicians pertaining to euthanasia. The moral dilemma involved in bridging the rift between the actual benefit of the patient from the physician perspective and the actual benefit of the patient according to his embodiment and embededness is attempted to address in a judicious manner. This paper attempts to discuss the beneficence of terminally ill patients where the dilemma between physicians view to benefit patients by eliminating pain and suffering from the terminally ill patient life on the one side and the patients benefit to choose death because of the intolerable pain on the other side. The yardstick used to measure the ethical standards of these two groups is analyzed from philosophical perspective especially in the ethical spectacles of Joseph Fletcher. According to the Divine right theory life or sanctity of life, ‘life is the gift of god and it is worth living’ but sometimes a particular person to continue life is a worse prospect than immediate death. Hence, the term ‘beneficence’ is analyzed from a 13 Hippocratic Oath, James F.C. Who Should Decide Paternalism in Health Care, New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, p.32 broader spectrum of the physician and the patient in understanding its legitimacy and coherence.