In the textbook, James Rachels, in some situations, feels that letting people die is morally worse than killing them. Rachel feels as if performing active euthanasia on a patient is okay. Active euthanasia allows the patient to not be in pain anymore and end their life knowing they do not have much longer in them. Say a patient has a disease that is incurable and is going to be in pain for the rest of their lives and does not want to be unable to partake in daily life activities they will not want to live anymore. The doctors giving them the correct medicine to take to die would be killing instead of not doing anything to try to save the patient. Giving patients treatment so they can die upon their wishes, not the doctors, would be considered Utilitarian ethical principles. When the patient has …show more content…
When Maynard had found out she did not have much longer to live, she had decided to move to a state that allowed her to have the right to die. In my opinion, I feel that she deserved the legal right to end her life as she was told she only had a little longer to live in her life anyways. It would be completely different if Maynard was able to get her brain tumor out and live a long, healthy life. However, that was not the case and she did not want to be in pain for the rest of her life. Since Maynard was so young, she did not want the rest of her life to be in pain. I agree with her thinking, as I would rather not feel pain. Pain and discomfort is something that I wish could go away and not happen again. As I agree with the patient’s wants, the American Medical Opinion on Euthanasia feels that ending one's life is going to cause more harm than it would do any good. The American Medical Opinion on Euthanasia states, “The physician who performs euthanasia assumes unique responsibility for the act of ending the patient’s life”