Euthanasia is the medical practice of deliberately ending a life in order to alleviate pain and suffering. There are altered outlooks on the wrongfulness of this practice. This side will look at two arguments brought forth by J. Gay Williams and James Rachels.
Misanthropists of euthanasia may attribute this to a growing inclination to undervalue human life. The acceptance of this is as a result of unthinking benevolence and sympathy. J. Gay Williams stats that euthanasia is in contrast to the natural objective of survival because it acts against nature because all procedures of life are geared to the end of human survival. The organization and structure of the human body and behavioral reactions make the continuance of life a natural goal and as such, euthanasia goes against our nature. The whole premise of euthanasia is to alleviate pain and suffering. Even though today's medicine is of high standards, misdiagnosis and mistaken prognosis are possible. The implication is that people may accept they are dying from an illness when they are not. Patients may accept that their situation is hopeless and they cannot recover when in fact they can (Gay-Williams, 1989). In such instances, if euthanasia is permitted then people will die needlessly. The final argument is that nurses and doctors are committed to saving lives and when a patient dies they take it as a failure on their part, now euthanasia may have a corrupting effect, nurses and doctors may not try hard to save patients in severe cases.
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The American Medical Association endorses passive euthanasia and considers it to be morally permissible. James Rachels believe that both active and passive euthanasia are immoral practices even though both practices are designed to kill the patient in different ways (Rachels, 1979). Endorsing one form of euthanasia and not the other has no logical sense because all practices are designed to kill the patient and are all on the same level of immorality.
I believe that James Rachels offers a better argument because both forms of euthanasia are set with one goal of murdering the patient. Nonetheless, there appears to be a big debate on the difference between "letting die" and "killing". I believe there is not much difference between the two because all types of euthanasia have a similar goal.
References
Gay-Williams, J. (1989). The wrongfulness of euthanasia. Euthanasia: the moral issues. New York: Prometheus Books , 97-102.
Rachels, J. (1979). Active and passive euthanasia. In Biomedical Ethics and the Law (pp. 511-516). Springer, Boston, MA.
