Euthanasi Active And Passive Euthanasia - 1562 Words

Euthanasia, also known as voluntary or assisted suicide, is used for terminally ill patients to end their lives instead of undergoing painful treatments and torment of waiting for death. There are, however, two different ways in which A can bring about B’s death. In this essay I will present the distinction between active and passive euthanasia as explained by James Rachels in his article called â€Å"Active and Passive Euthanasia†. I will also debate whether euthanasia is justified or not by presenting arguments both pro and against euthanasia including pain and financial burden as justifications for euthanasia and abuse of rights as against euthanasia. The major distinction described by Rachels would be, simply put, killing and letting die.†¦show more content†¦Rachels argues â€Å"To begin with a familiar type of situation, a patient who is dying of incurable cancer of the throat is in terrible pain†¦ This fact provides strong reason for thinking that†¦ active euthanasia is actually preferable to passive euthanasia, rather than the reverse.† (Rachels, 78) Rachels argument is that there is no moral difference between actively killing a patient and passively allowing the patient to die. For example, killing Joan benefits Bill. Whether Bill kills him directly or lets him die doesn’t affect the morality of the situation. Thus, both the situations would be considered equally immoral. The conclusion following the example above would be that there is no difference between killing (active euthanasia) and letting die (passive euthanasia). According to Rachels, accepting that there is a distinction between active and passive euthanasia would result in decisions about life and death being made on irrelevant grounds. For example, autistic infants sometimes have correctable secondary problems, such as having an intestinal obstruction; but decisions are made to forego corrective surgery (and thus let the infant die) simply because the parents do not want the burden of having an autistic child. In Rachels opinion, passive euthanasia may generally be preferable to active euthanasia which doesn’t seem right. Being allowed to die can be an incredibly painful process. A lethal injection, however, is less painful. Assuming a terminally ill