If all forms of mercy killing are wrong, they should remain taboo. But are they? (46)Because many people accept that it is sad, undignified and gruesome to prolong the throes of death with all the might of medical technology, passive euthanasia—letting patients die—is widely accepted. Active euthanasia-killing remains controversial. How long can the distinction between killing and letting die hold out? Just as there can be culpable omissions, so too can there be blameless acts. Suppose that a man stands to gain from the death of a certain child. The child strikes his head in the bath and falls unconscious. The man sits down and watches him drown. The fact that the man has performed no action does not excuse him. Similarly, suppose that a doctor does no wrong by withholding some treatment in order, that death should come sooner rather than later. Is he then necessarily wrong if he uses enough painkillers to kill? Does the fact that the doctor performed an action, rather than an omission, condemn him? Many doctors working on the battlefield of terminal suffering think that no one should demand a firm difference between passive and active euthanasia on request. (47)Their argument for killing goes like this: one of a doctors duty is to prevent suffering; sometimes that is all there is left for him to do, and killing is the only way to do it. (48)Some people believed that the time of death is appointed by God and that no man should put the clock back on another. Yet if a patients philosophical views embrace euthanasia, it is not clear why the religious objections of others should intrude on his death. (49)Another worry is that a legal framework for euthanasia, permitting a doctor to comply with a dying mans request in a prescribed set of circumstances, might pose dangers for society by setting a precedent for killing. That depends on the society. Holland, arguably, is ready for it. It is probably no coincidence that it was Dutch doctors who most heroically resisted pressure to join in the Second World War Nazi medical atrocities that have given euthanasia its worst name. (50)The same respect for individual liberty that stopped them killing healthy people, who did not want to die, now lets them help dying people who do. Germany, by contrast, will not be able to legalize any form. of euthanasia for a long time to come. Opposition is too fierce, because of the shadow of the past. Countries with an uninterrupted recent libertarian tradition have less to fear from setting some limited rules for voluntary euthanasia. By refusing to discuss it, they usher in something worse.
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