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Ethical Arguments Against Euthanasia

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Recent developments in medicine have raised concern for a particular problem that has been a major debate in medical history: the issue of how to treat those who have determined their lives have no likelihood for progression and are no longer worth living. There is a right to die, because human beings have the fundamental and explicit right to choose. Four particular concepts justify how having a right to “live” also implies that there is a right to “death”: individual, competent self-determination, moral incongruity between killing and “letting die”, and the presumed lack of proof to show probable unsafe consequences of legalized euthanasia. Dying is one of the most important parts in human life, therefore the right to die and the right to …show more content…

Giving up on personal autonomy fundamentally dehumanizes a person. Patients should always be given the choice to make their own decisions regarding the treatment that they receive, provided that those decisions are within certain boundaries of both the law and universal moral guidelines. These boundaries are heavily debated today in medical-related ethical arguments. Daniel Callahan asserts that there is an important distinction between suicide and euthanasia. Rationally, he explains that “individuals might have a self-determining right to commit suicide, at least theoretically, however, suicide usually does not involve anyone else’s help, euthanasia, clearly involves another person” (Callahan 226). This implies that euthanasia is no longer a circumstance of strictly self-determination, but also of a social, mutual decision between two parties: the one to be killed, and the one exploiting the killing. He leads to the idea that it is not morally permissible to allow another human being to have this kind of power. Callahan provides an analogy regarding slavery, stating that one person should not hold that kind of power/authority over another. This also precedes into a deeper examination of the definition of suffering, explaining how problematic it can be to define such a conceptual idea. Callahan finds it impractical to determine who meets these standards for physician-assisted suicide without …show more content…

Many argue the Equivalence Thesis, which states how killing and letting die are symmetric in fault. However, if one were to compare a traditional murder with the act of a physician who cordially allows a suffering patient to die, clearly the murder would be concluded to be much worse. Therefore, there are many other factors that must contribute to the bold statement of equally comparing both acts of killing and letting die. H. Tristram Engelhardt describes how “distinctions between intention and foresight, active and passive euthanasia, as well as killing and letting die, cease to have moral significance; they may take on moral weight from different possible consequences in different circumstances” (Engelhardt 343). He also continues to reach a point that “without reference to a moral and/or meta-physical account of pain and suffering, it is difficult if not impossible to explain why such should be endured, or why consensual killing would be in itself wrong” (343). This shows that the distinction between killing and letting die is not morally significant and should not reflect upon acts such as passive and active euthanasia. Hence, there should not be any moral equivalence associated to “killing” and “letting die” because of the ceaseless factors contributing to the good and well-being of the persons’ life

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