Ethique ethics
Ethique (adj) ethical
Non déontologique unethical
Spécialiste de bioéthique bioethicist
Le serment d’Hippocrate the Hippocratic oath
Prêter serment take the oath
Blesser injure
Faire du tort wrong
Rester fidèle à son serment keep the oath
Un sujet de controverse a matter of controversy
Se trouver devant un problème face an issue
Soulever un dilemme raise a dilemma
Alimenter un débat fuel a debate
Un sujet difficile a tough issue
- délicat ticklish
- sensible emotional
directives guidelines
faire une loi write a law
mettre en application implement
légiférer legislate
dérives abuses
abus excesses
enfreindre la loi breach the law
condamnable punishable
Etre partisan favour
Excuser (fermer les yeux sur) condone
Faire un choix make a choice
Consentement éclairé informed consent
Avoir recours à resort to
En jeu at stake
Condamner condemn
Au cas par cas case by case
Un préjudice harm (moral)/ loss (financial)/ wrong
Un préjugé a prejudice
Abuser de take advantage of/ Abuse/misuse something
AVORTEMENT/ABORTION
Partisan du libre choix pro-choice
Opposant à l’avortement pro-life (a pro-lifer)
Interruption de grossesse termination of pregnancy
Grossesse non-désirée unwanted pregnancy
Attendre un enfant expect a child
Pillule abortive abortive pill
Traumatisme trauma
Fausse couche miscarriage
EUTHANASIE/EUTHANASIA
Euthanasie active/passive Passive/active euthanasia
Pratiquer l’euthanasie practise/ carry out euthanasia
Se suicider commit suicide
Mort médicalement assistée doctor-assisted suicide
Malade en phase terminale terminally-ill patients
Maladie incurable incurable disease
Etre en phase terminale be in final stage
Souffrance pain
Soins palliatifs palliative care
Accéder à la demande grant the request
Aider à se suicider aid a suicide
Abréger/prolonger la vie shorten/prolong life
Grande souffrance great suffering
Etre un poids be a burden
Hâter la mort hasten death
Assassiner murder
Aspirer à mourir yearn for death
Le droit à mourir dans la dignité right to die in dignity
Acharnement thérapeutique overtreat
Cocktail lithique lethal/death-inducing cocktail
Faire une injection give an injection
Sans souffrance painless
Etat végétatif vegetative state
Etre inconscient lie unconscious
En état de mort cérébrale brain dead
Maintenu en vie kept alive artificially
Assistance life-support machine/respirator
Arrêter withdraw
Alimentation food
Deuil grieving
CLONAGE/CLONING
Thérapeutique therapeutic
Reproductif reproductive
Utiliser une technique à mauvais escient misuse a technique
Eugénisme eugenism
Purification ethnique ethnic purification
Embryon humain human embryo
Défaut defect
Féconder fertilize
Fécondation fertilization
Essai attempt
DON D’ORGANES/ORGAN DONATION
Donneur donor
Receveur recipient
Manque shortage
Liste d’attente waiting list
Compatible matching/compatible
Faire don donate
L’offre et la demande demand and supply
Rare scarce
Rejet rejection
Greffe/r graft
Immuno-suppresseur immuno-suppressant
Traitement à vie life-long treatment
ERREUR MEDICALE/MALPRACTICE
Commettre une faute make an error
Poursuivre en justice sue
Un procès a trial
Personne mise en examen defendant
Procureur prosecutor
Plaignant litigant
Dommages damages
Etre tenu pour responsable de be held liable for
ADOPTION/ADOPTION
Célibataire single
Famille mono-parentale single-parent family
Beau-père step-father
Orphelin orphan
Orphelinat orphanage
Famille/foyer d’accueil foster family/home
Assitante sociale social worker
Abandonner abandon
Adopter adopt
Reconnaître acknowledge
La garde custody
Sexe gender
Figure maternelle mother figure
Fête des pères Father’s Day
CHIRURGIE ESTHETIQUE/PLASTIC SURGERY
Chirurgien surgeon
Liposucion liposuction
Rhinoplastie rhinoplasty/a nose-job
Augmentation/réduction mammaire breast augmentation/reduction
Lifting face-lift
Augmentation du pénis Penile/penis enlargement
Implants implants
Se faire opérer have surgery/be operated on
Opérer un patient operate on a patient
Complexes complexes
Se faire de l’argent make money
Anneau gastrique gastric ring
Coudre sew [səu], sewed, sewn
Chirurgie réparatrice Reconstructive surgery
PROSTITUTION/PROSTITUTION
Se prostituer prostitute oneself
Faire le tapin walk the street
Proxénète procurer
Un mac a pimp
Proxénétisme procuring
Un quartier chaud red-light district
Maison close brothel
Trafic trade in (women/children)
Privé/e de deprived of
Menacer threaten
Battu/e beaten
Mineur under-aged
Violer rape
Drogué/e drug-addict
Etre maître/sse de son corps own your own body
Fange mire [′maiə]
Estime de soi self-esteem
L’euthanasie/ Euthanasia
I. In pairs, give a brief definition of the following words :
1. euthanasia
2. murder
3. palliative care
4. hospice
II. In the class, find someone who…
1. has someone in their family who wanted to die ______________
2. has heard of a doctor who practices euthanasia _________________
3. has someone in their family who was euthanasized ________________
4. has already visited a hospice ___________________
5. has already accompanied a dying person ________________
III. In pairs, look at the following statements and decide if they support euthanasia or if they are against it. Label them Pro or Anti.
Statements Pro Anti
A doctor’s duty is to save life, not to take it
Doctors know the moral differences between helping people who beg to die and killing those who want to live
Doctors, patients, relatives might abuse the law and kill someone who does not want to die
Everyone has a basic right to choose how they want to die
Many people do not want to spend their last days suffering in an undignified way
Hospices make terminally ill patients very comfortable and relieve their pain
Life is sacred and no one has a right to take it
Some doctors already help patients to die illegally
Some patients who ask to die do not really want to die
IV. Read the following article and answer the questions:
Assisted suicide seduction
Wesley J. Smith
On April 29, 2002, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg rejected the assisted-suicide petition of a paralyzed British woman who argued that not being able to die in "dignity" violated her human rights.
Does Britain violate the "right to life" guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights by outlawing assisted suicide? Does the law against assisted killing violate the convention's guarantee of privacy, freedom of conscience, prohibition on discrimination and the right not to be treated in an inhumane and degrading way?
Thankfully, the EU court answered each of these questions with a resounding and unanimous "no."
Diane Pretty was dying from motor neuron disease (often called Lou Gehrig's disease in the United States). Last year, she asked a British court to prevent British law enforcement from punishing her husband, Brian, if he helped her to commit suicide.
When the trial court refused to preempt the anti-assisted suicide law for her, Pretty appealed to the House of Lords. When the Lords ruled against her, she turned to the European Union, which has now ruled along the same lines as the U.S. Supreme Court has with respect to the U.S. Constitution that no fundamental right to assisted suicide exists under the developing EU legal system.
Pain control has advanced to the point that even the agony of bone cancer can be substantially alleviated. Depression, often a cause for suicide desire in terminally ill patients, also can be treated effectively, often reversing the desire to die.
Hospice care provides the opportunity for patients to pass in quiet dignity and comfort in their own beds, while receiving intense hands-on assistance from professionals and community volunteers. No one should be allowed to die in agony. Thankfully, assisted suicide is unnecessary to achieve that worthy goal.
Another factor often overlooked in the media is that refusing unwanted medical treatment is not the same as assisted suicide.
At about the time that Diane Pretty was losing her cases, "Miss B," another quadriplegic British woman, won the right in court to direct her doctors to turn off her respirator. She died soon thereafter.
The media labeled both cases "right to die," swallowing whole the favorite political slogan of the euthanasia movement. But Miss B did not win a right to die. She won the right to refuse medical treatment -- a right that has long been recognized in the United States.
Laws permitting patients to refuse unwanted medical treatment are moral and ethical in that they prevent patients from being forced to submit to unwanted bodily intrusions. This is not the same thing at all as euthanasia or assisted suicide.
In a treatment-refusal case, death comes from the underlying physical condition. In assisted suicide, death is caused artificially -- usually by poisoning. In a refusal of treatment case, the patient may not die. Indeed, the most famous of such patients, Karen Ann Quinlan, lived for nearly 10 years after her respirator was removed.
But in euthanasia and assisted suicide, poison invariably does its job—albeit sometimes with such disturbing side effects as vomiting, convulsions or extended coma.
The media seldom report that the slippery slope is real. When opponents of legalized assisted suicide worry about abuses, assisted suicide advocates invariably soothe the public's nerves by assuring that guidelines will protect against abuse.
The situation in the Netherlands, which has permitted decriminalized euthanasia since 1973 and formally legalizing killing by doctors this year, demonstrates the utter falsity of this assurance.
During the past 30 years, the Dutch have slid quickly down the slippery slope. Doctors have gone from killing terminally ill people who ask to be killed, to chronically ill persons who ask to be killed, to infants born with defects who by definition cannot ask to be killed.
Doctors also are permitted to assist the suicides of depressed people, thanks to a Dutch Supreme Court ruling involving a psychiatrist who assisted a woman's suicide because her two children had died. Several studies of the Dutch experience also prove that doctors kill approximately 1,000 people each year who have not asked to be euthanized. This practice is so common it has a name: termination without request or consent. Despite violating every guideline, it is rarely prosecuted and almost never punished.
Further demonstrating the seductive nature of killing as an answer to human suffering, the Dutch minister of health has now proposed that elderly people who are tired of life but who do not otherwise qualify for euthanasia be given access to suicide pills to take whenever they wish.
Perhaps most important, assisted suicide inevitably will be about money. Once fully established in the bedrock of medical practice, it would be less about "choice" than about profits in the health care system or cutting the costs of government-funded health care. (The drugs for an assisted suicide cost about $40.)
Legalizing physician-assisted suicide would return us to practices equivalent to those of ancient societies that exposed disabled infants on hills and left the elderly and infirm by the side of the road. Our sick and dying loved ones deserve better. We open the door to assisted suicide at our own peril.
1. Who is Diane Pretty?
2. What was she asking for?
3. What was the European Court of Human Rights’ decision?
4. Why did Miss B win her case? What was different?
5. Why are the Dutch “on the slippery slope”? Give examples.
6. What do you think about the situation there? Do you think it had to be that way?
V. Euthanasia should be made legal in France.
1. Write down the pros and cons of euthanasia. Write as many points as you can think of for both sides, even if you only support one side.
2. Imagine you are the medical ethics committee working for the French government. Your task is to make a list of guidelines under which voluntary euthanasia can be carried out properly and safely.
