Preferring active to passive euthanasia

Preferring active to passive euthanasia

This section is written from the presumption that there are occasions when euthanasia is morally OK. If you believe that euthanasia is always wrong, then this section is not worth reading.
Active euthanasia is morally better because it can be quicker and cleaner, and it may be less painful for the patient.
Doctors faced with the problem of an incurable patient who wants to die have often felt it was morally better to withdraw treatment from a patient and let the patient die than to kill the patient (perhaps with a lethal injection).
But some philosophers think that active euthanasia is in fact the morally better course of action.
Here's a case to consider:

• A is dying of incurable cancer.
• A will die in about 7 days.
• A is in great pain, despite high doses of painkilling drugs.
• A asks his doctor to end it all.
• If the doctor agrees, she has two choices about what to do:
  • The doctor stops giving A the drugs that are keeping him alive, but continues pain killers - A dies 3 days later, after having been in pain despite the doctor's best efforts.
  • The doctor gives A a lethal injection - A becomes unconscious within seconds and dies within an hour.

Let's suppose that the reason A wants to die is because he wants to stop suffering pain, and that that's the reason the doctor is willing to allow euthanasia in each case. Active euthanasia reduces the total amount of pain A suffers, and so active euthanasia should be preferred in this case.
To accept this argument we have to agree that the best action is one the which causes the greatest happiness (or perhaps the least unhappiness) for the patient (and perhaps for the patient's relatives and carers too). Not everyone would agree that this is the right way to argue.
We can look at this situation is another way:

• Causing death is a great evil if death is a great evil.
• A lesser evil should always be preferred to a greater evil.
• If passive euthanasia would be right in this case then the continued existence of the patient in a state of great pain must be a greater evil than their death.
• So allowing the patient to continue to live in this state is a greater evil than causing their death.
• Causing their death swiftly is a lesser evil than allowing them to live in pain.
• Active euthanasia is a lesser evil than passive euthanasia.

But this still won't satisfy some people. James Rachels has offered some other arguments that work differently.

Do as you would be done by

The rule that we should treat other people as we would like them to treat us also seems to support euthanasia, if we would want to be put out of our misery if we were in A's position. But this isn't necessarily so:

• A person might well not want to be killed even in this situation, if their beliefs or opinions were not against active euthanasia.
• There are many examples of people who have accepted appalling pain for their beliefs.

Only rules that apply to everyone can be accepted

One well-known ethical principle says that we should only be guided by moral principles that we would accept should be followed by everyone.
If we accept that active euthanasia is wrong, then we accept as a universal rule that people should be permitted to suffer severe pain before death if that is the consequence of their disease.

source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/activepassive_1.shtml