Arguments Against Active Euthanasia

Thesis Paper Rachels: Topic 4:

Active, as well as passive euthanasia are topics of interest for many people within the medical field and beyond. There seems to be many circumstances in which withholding further treatment for a patient is fitting (passive euthanasia), whereas the direct action of killing a patient through lethal injection (active euthanasia) is indefinitely wrong. A doctrine for doctors was made for them to consult with in times of incurable diseases and when a patient wishes to discontinue their treatment. This doctrine is a statement made by the American Medical Association (AMA) and states that intentional termination of one human being’s life is an action that medical professionals cannot legally consent to. The decision

This example demonstrates that some cases of letting death occur are just as morally wrong as killing a person. Here, Rachels uses the example of two boys named Smith and Jones. Both are to gain a large inheritance if anything were to happen to their 6-year-old cousin. Smith walks into the bathroom where his cousin lays in the bathtub and drowns the child, covering it up to seem like an accident. Jones walks into the bathroom and sees his cousin hit his head and fall face-down in the tub and drown by himself, while Jones stands by delighted to see his cousin drown (Rachels, p. 249). This example is brought up to defend Rachel’s belief that the motive behind the action is the moral determinant in cases as such, and not the mere action itself. Here he is defending the moral rightness or wrongness independent of how the death was brought but rather the intent motivating the action. Here, the intent in both cases was to terminate life, and Jones who simply just stood by allowing the death to occur would be no more morally justified than Smith who physically killed the child; they both were motivated by their own gain of an inheritance from the child’s death, which is morally unsound (Rachels, p. 249). We can apply this rationale to medical cases in which doctors act with a motive to promote the most humane death. Here, we could say active and passive euthanasia would have the same moral justification as passive euthanasia is what the doctrine asks of the doctor; however, active euthanasia would reduce the amount of suffering and provide the most humane death compared to that of prolonged suffering by passive euthanasia (Rachels, p. 250). In most cases, killing is often thought of as morally unjust compared to letting one die, mainly because we have a preconceived notion that only horrible people kill and that