Introduction
Decisions concerning euthanasia are most challenging in bioethics as it is interacting with the difficult fact that all people will ultimately face death, at times unwillingly. Euthanasia is a process of deliberately ending a person’s life to relieve unbearable suffering and pain. It is typically applied to individuals who are paralyzed or in a coma and are on a life support machine.
The terms applied to express the act include physician-assisted suicide, mercy killing, a good death, and dying with respect. Passive euthanasia is terminating a person’s life as per their will by switching off a life machine. It is argued that patients should be respected for their autonomy and relieved from pain and suffering.
Passive euthanasia is considered a safe medical practice by a healthcare practitioner (LaFollette 24). The essay argues that passive euthanasia is ethical and should be legal. Therefore, the essay presents an ethical framework to argue for or against passive euthanasia despite being sophisticated because of the aspect that death is considered a bad thing in society.
Right to Die Argument
Humans have the right to die based on their way of life. In cases where no dependents could exert pressure on either side, an individual’s life decision must be paramount. Determined that a patient is coherent, and their intent is straightforward beyond any doubt, there is a need for further interrogation. Most people believe that everyone has a right to control their life and body; hence, they must be capable of determining at what point in life, in what manner, and in what way they can die.
Passive euthanasia is therefore directed at its core by solidarity with respect and suffering for a patient’s will. The aspect of dying should be a patient’s natural right to be respected from the perspective of keeping their dignity (LaFollette 51). In addition, people are independent life entities having the right to make and carry out resolutions about themselves, and offering the greater good of the community does not prevent this.
Objection
Religious objection to the right to die rests on a supernatural being who has control over death. The right to life entails a natural right enshrined in each religious doctrine and morals. Thus, embracing the right to a dignified death with individuals having debilitating and incurable diseases may be disposed of from their civilized society (LaFollette 53). They note that there can never be a need to end the life of somebody because of pain and suffering that may generally be managed. It is argued that in the long term, miracles are inevitable, or there is persistently an avenue that someone recovers, and this makes passive euthanasia not morally right (58). Further, killing might never be expected to be supernatural, specifically a divine intervention.
Response
In response to this, the right to die appears to be a slippery slope and may be abused. People with such perspectives may be assisted in discovering that such a situation is not worse than death (LaFollette 73). Therefore, there is a need to balance the implications for them against the patient’s rights.
There is also a need to consider the given responsibility to society and balance the patient’s right to die against any harmful effects that it could have on society as a whole. Passive euthanasia happens in most healthcare facilities, in which underprivileged patients and their family members withdraw or decline treatment due to the high cost of keeping them alive. Therefore, legalizing it, the commercial health industry may serve a death sentence to several elderly and disabled people for a small amount of money (75). This should be balanced against the urge to make the sanctity of life a significant, abstract, and intrinsic value of a state.
The Libertarian Argument
When an action supports the best interests of everybody concerned and breaches no one’s rights, it is deemed morally acceptable. In certain instances, passive euthanasia encourages the best interests of everybody involved and breaches no individual’s rights; hence, it is morally acceptable.
Objection
However, the objection to the argument is that no cases match the abovementioned circumstances. Humans may sometimes believe things are done in their best interest when not morally acceptable (LaFollette 76). Hence, arguments that passive euthanasia is intrinsically wrong are relevant to this objection.
Response
It can be noted that humans are sometimes wrong concerning what is in their best interests in life. They cannot realize that carrying out passive euthanasia can injure other people. Euthanasia can deprive both the patient who dies and other people of benefits. Besides, it is not a private act; thus, people cannot ignore its harmful effects on the community.
Euthanasia is always seen as morally wrong, although passive euthanasia in a standard arrangement is not ethically wrong. People with degenerative, debilitating, incurable, and disabling circumstances must be permitted to die with dignity (LaFollette 86). Conversely, ethical conservatives trust that it is also wrong; the moral belief can or cannot be true.
Cause of Death Argument
The argument centers on the issue of causation and notes that euthanasia leads to death. However, based on the cause of death, omissions may not lead to death. Passive euthanasia, also known as omission, cannot lead to death; thus, it cannot be termed as euthanasia. However, this argument has critical flaws in asserting that omissions may not make death seem false (LaFollette 85). He did not bother to read or revise for exams; he omitted to study.
Objection
The objection critically erodes this argument. There are certain situations where omissions may cause death. For instance, most patients dying are suffering from pain and other distress that doctors might relieve or prevent with existing therapies, antibiotics, and knowledge (LaFollette 87). They fail to offer the appropriate medication, thus causing the patient’s death.
Response
Suppose a firm declines to offer its workers safety gadgets for high-risk tasks. The manager believes they are expensive; the money may be spent on something more profitable because there may not be an accident this year. Unfortunately, an employee dies at a time when, if given the standard safety kit, they would have survived the ordeal.
The company’s failure to provide them with the safety gadgets killed the worker. In this case, omission is the physician’s failure to end their patient’s life, which is liable for the cause of death (LaFollette 95). In that case, nonetheless, passive euthanasia may kill even though, unlike the examples provided above, it is ethically acceptable.
In response, the ethical position of an omission may influence whether it counts as a cause; specifically, merely impermissible omissions may be causes. For instance, if a parent wrongfully declines to care for a child or pet owners negligently refuse to feed the animals, they are omitted as these contribute to death (LaFollette 106). The primary reason for considering them causally efficacious is that they violate a positive ethical duty to act because individuals are not acting as expected.
Suppose ten patients are booked for a machine delivering life support treatment. Seven patients are interested in the treatment and must maintain it, while the remaining three are not; withdrawing the machine from treatment could be ethically acceptable. However, one switch manages all the machines, and a person deliberately switches off, and all the patients die (LaFollette 108). In this case, the physicians are typically not liable for killing if they withdraw or withhold medication or offer palliative medication that hastens death (LaFollette 112). Thus, in a terminal disease context, the failure to delay death should not lead to it.
Conclusion
Passive euthanasia requires an action, which permitted me to consider that the active agent is what needs to be examined to help in determining the ethical acceptability of euthanasia. Therefore, patient independence is the actual cause, which I consider to be responsible for concluding that passive euthanasia is ethically acceptable. Most patients may still leave their loved ones behind and aspects they enjoy. However, the patient has chosen that the pain surpasses the good things in life after a given point.
Work Cited
LaFollette, Hugh. Ethics in Practice: An Anthology. John Wiley & Sons, 2020.