Active and passive euthanasia
Active euthanasia
Active euthanasia occurs when the medical professionals, or another person, deliberately do something that causes the patient to die.
Passive euthanasia
Passive euthanasia occurs when the patient dies because the medical professionals either don't do something necessary to keep the patient alive, or when they stop doing something that is keeping the patient alive.
- switch off life-support machines
- disconnect a feeding tube
- don't carry out a life-extending operation
- don't give life-extending drugs
The moral difference between killing and letting die
Many people make a moral distinction between active and passive euthanasia.
They think that it is acceptable to withhold treatment and allow a patient to die, but that it is never acceptable to kill a patient by a deliberate act.
Some medical people like this idea. They think it allows them to provide a patient with the death they want without having to deal with the difficult moral problems they would face if they deliberately killed that person.
Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive, officiously, to keep alive.Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861)
There is no real difference
But some people think this distinction is nonsense, since stopping treatment is a deliberate act, and so is deciding not to carry out a particular treatment.
Switching off a respirator requires someone to carry out the action of throwing the switch. If the patient dies as a result of the doctor switching off the respirator then although it's certainly true that the patient dies from lung cancer (or whatever), it's also true that the immediate cause of their death is the switching off of the breathing machine.
- in active euthanasia the doctor takes an action with the intention that it will cause the patient's death
- in passive euthanasia the doctor lets the patient die
- when a doctor lets someone die, they carry out an action with the intention that it will cause the patient's death
- so there is no real difference between passive and active euthanasia, since both have the same result: the death of the patient on humanitarian grounds
- thus the act of removing life-support is just as much an act of killing as giving a lethal injection
Is active euthanasia morally better?
Some (mostly philosophers) go even further and say that active euthanasia is morally better because it can be quicker and cleaner, and it may be less painful for the patient.