Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T04:04:22.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reconceptualizing the Euthanasia Debate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 April 2021

Raymond J. Devettere
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

For humane reasons, with informed consent a physician may do what is medically necessary to alleviate severe pain, or cease or omit treatment to let a terminally ill patient die, but he should not intentionally cause death.

—Current Opinion of the Judicial Council of the American Medical Association—1984

This well known position of the AMA Judicial Council implies that the distinction between intentionally causing death and letting a patient die is conceptually clear and ethically significant. Most opponents of active voluntary euthanasia accept the validity of this distinction; proponents inevitably do not. The President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research is a notable exception.

Type
Article
Information
Law, Medicine and Healthcare , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , Summer 1989 , pp. 145 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983: 71.Google Scholar
Rachels, J., “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” The New England Journal of Medicine 1975; 292: 79.Google Scholar
Feldman, D.M. Rosner, F., eds., Jewish Compendium on Medical Ethics. New York: Federation of Jewish Philanthropies, 1984: 12.Google Scholar
Declaration on Euthanasia, Origins 1980; 10: 155. Also in: Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment, Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1983: 302.Google Scholar
Nevins, M., “Perspectives of a Jewish Physician,” in Lynn, J., ed., By No Extraordinary Means, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986: 100.Google Scholar
McCormick, R., “To Save or Let Die: The Dilemma of Modern Medicine,” in How Brave a New World? Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1985: 349. Also in: Journal of the American Medical Association 1974; 229: 172–176.Google Scholar
Fuchs, J., “Christian Faith and the Disposing of Human Life,” Theological Studies 1985; 46: 673.Google Scholar
Edelstein, L., “The Hippocratic Oath,” in Temkin, O. Temkin, L., eds., Ancient Medicine: Selected Papers of Ludwig Edelstein, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1967: 55ff.Google Scholar
Amundsen, D.W., “The Physician's Obligation to Prolong Life: A Medical Duty without Classical Roots,” The Hastings Center Report, August 1978; 8: 26f.Google Scholar
Politics, 1335b20-26.Google Scholar
Nicomachean ethics, 1116a10-15; 1138a3-15.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, T.L. Childress, J.F., Principles of Biomedical Ethics, New York: Oxford University Press, 1983: 5.Google Scholar
See: D'Arcy, E., Human Action, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963: 192ff.Google Scholar
Nicomachean ethics, 1106b35-1107a3.Google Scholar
Id.: 1104b25-27.Google Scholar
Id.: 1111a3-6.Google Scholar
Summa theologiae, I–II. q.7, a.1, a.2, a.4.Google Scholar
Id.: Q. 64, a.1.Google Scholar
Nicomachean ethics, 1106b36-1107a1.Google Scholar
Kuhse, H., “The Case for Active Voluntary Euthanasia,” Law, Medicine & Health Care 1986; 14: 146f.Google Scholar
Alexander, L., “Medical Science under Dictatorship,” The New England Journal of Medicine 1949; 249: 39–47.Google Scholar
Jonsen, A.R., “Casuistry and Clinical Ethics,” Theoretical Medicine 1986; 7: 65–74.Google Scholar