Reconceptualizing the Euthanasia Debate

Abstract

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—1984This 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.