Question

What argument does Rachels provide for the idea that letting die is sometimes worse than killing?

Answer 1

Rachels, who spent much of his career as a philosophy professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, broke ground by arguing that" actively killing a patient with a terminal illness was no worse morally than letting the person die by doing nothing".

#. First argument against the conventional doctrine is that many cases of "letting die" are WORSE (for the patient) than is killing them. If the patient is going to die either way, why is it morally permissible to dehydrate them to death? Either way, the patient is dead.

Example 1

EXAMPLE 1: to begin with a familiar type of situation, a patient who is dying of incurable cancer of the throat is in terrible pain, which can no longer be satisfactorily alleviated. he is certain to die within a few days, even if present treatment is continued, but he does not want to go on living for those days since the pain is unbearable. So he asks the doctor for an end to it, and his family joins in the request.

Suppose the doctor agrees to withhold treatment, as the conventional doctrine says he may. the justification for his doing so is that the patient is in terrible agony, and since he is going to die anyway, it would be wrong to prolong his suffering needlessly. But now notice this. If one simply withholds treatment, it may take the patient longer to die, and so he may suffer more than he would if more direct action were taken and a lethal injection given.

This fact provides strong reason for thinking that, once the initial decision not to prolong his agony has been made, ACTIVE EUTHANASIA is actually PREFERABLE to PASSIVE euthanasia, rather than the reverse. to say otherwise is to endorse the opinion that leads to more suffering rather than less, and is contrary to the humanitarian impulse that prompts the decision not to prolong his life in the first place.

part of my point is that the process of being "allowed to die" can be relatively slow and painful, whereas being given a lethal injection is relatively quick and painless.

#. Second Opposing Argument against the doctrine

My second argument is that the conventional doctrine leads to decisions concerning life and death made on irrelevant grounds.

Example 1:

consider again the case of the infants with Down's syndrome who need operations for congenital defects UNRELATED to the syndrome to live.

The reason why such operations are not performed in these cases is, clearly, that the child has Down's syndrome and the parents and the doctor judge that because of that fact it is better for the child to die.

But notice that this situation is absurd, no matter what view one takes of the lives and potentials of such babies.

If the life of such an infant is worth preserving, what does it matter if it needs a simple operation?

It is the Down's syndrome, and not the intestines, that is the issue. The matter should be decided, if at all, on that basis, and not be allowed to depend on the essentially irrelevant question of whether the intestinal tract is blocked.

What makes this situation possible, of course, is the IDEA that when there is an intestinal blockage, one can "let the baby die," but when there is NO SUCH DEFECT there is nothing that can be done, for one must not "kill" it.

The fact that this idea leads to such results as deciding life or death on irrelevant grounds is another good reason why the doctrine would be rejected.