Euthanasia

Suicide, is of great importance to Durkheim. This was so because it is his first serious effort to establish empiricism in sociology, an empiricism that would provide a sociological explanation for a phenomenon traditionally regarded as exclusively psychological and individualistic. Durkheim proposed this definition of suicide: the term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result. Durkheim drew theoretical conclusions on the social causes of suicide. He proposed four types of suicide, based on the degrees of imbalance of two social forces: social integration and moral regulation. Furthermore this brings me to the subject of euthanasia.

First of, euthanasia is the intentional killing by act or omission of a dependent human being for his or her alleged benefit. The key word here is "intentional", if death is not intended it is not an act of euthanasia. There is non-voluntary as well as involuntary euthanasia. In addition to that, assisted suicide is when an individual is provided with the information, guidance, and means to take his or her own life with the intention that they will be used for this purpose (e.g. a doctor who helps another person to kill oneself). There’s something called euthanasia by action and that is intentionally causing a person's death by performing an action such as by giving a lethal injection and as well as euthanasia by omission is intentionally causing death by not providing necessary and ordinary (usual and customary) care or food and water. These are just the many types of euthanasia that exist today.

In a situation where there is an elderly person who is extremely ill, euthanasia may arise as an issue. In this scenario the person is living off of life support and cannot be discharged from the hospital. This makes the family members or caretakers of this particular person very concerned for the well being of the individual. They all must decide on whether to "pull the plug" or to wait out the life of the person. There is always the chance they may get better or continue to worsen, but to witness someone slipping away slowly, holding on for dear life, clouds the judgment of the family or caretaker. They may make a rushed decision and tell the medical personnel that they decided to take the individual off of life support. The individual making the final decision takes into consideration how long the person