Cargando…

What passive euthanasia is

BACKGROUND: Euthanasia can be thought of as being either active or passive; but the precise definition of “passive euthanasia” is not always clear. Though all passive euthanasia involves the withholding of life-sustaining treatment, there would appear to be some disagreement about whether all such w...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor principal: Brassington, Iain
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7227198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32410605
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020-00481-7
_version_ 1783534453267628032
author Brassington, Iain
author_facet Brassington, Iain
author_sort Brassington, Iain
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Euthanasia can be thought of as being either active or passive; but the precise definition of “passive euthanasia” is not always clear. Though all passive euthanasia involves the withholding of life-sustaining treatment, there would appear to be some disagreement about whether all such withholding should be seen as passive euthanasia. MAIN TEXT: At the core of the disagreement is the question of the importance of an intention to bring about death: must one intend to bring about the death of the patient in order for withholding treatment to count as passive euthanasia, as some sources would indicate, or does withholding in which death is merely foreseen belong to that category? We may expect that this unclarity would be important in medical practice, in law, and in policy. The idea that withholding life-sustaining treatment is passive euthanasia is traced to James Rachels’s arguments, which lend themselves to the claim that passive euthanasia does not require intention to end life. Yet the argument here is that Rachels’s arguments are flawed, and we have good reasons to think that intention is important in understanding the moral nature of actions. As such, we should reject any understanding of passive euthanasia that does not pay attention to intent. SHORT CONCLUSION: James Rachels’s work on active and passive euthanasia has been immensely influential; but this is an influence that we ought to resist.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-7227198
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2020
publisher BioMed Central
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-72271982020-05-27 What passive euthanasia is Brassington, Iain BMC Med Ethics Debate BACKGROUND: Euthanasia can be thought of as being either active or passive; but the precise definition of “passive euthanasia” is not always clear. Though all passive euthanasia involves the withholding of life-sustaining treatment, there would appear to be some disagreement about whether all such withholding should be seen as passive euthanasia. MAIN TEXT: At the core of the disagreement is the question of the importance of an intention to bring about death: must one intend to bring about the death of the patient in order for withholding treatment to count as passive euthanasia, as some sources would indicate, or does withholding in which death is merely foreseen belong to that category? We may expect that this unclarity would be important in medical practice, in law, and in policy. The idea that withholding life-sustaining treatment is passive euthanasia is traced to James Rachels’s arguments, which lend themselves to the claim that passive euthanasia does not require intention to end life. Yet the argument here is that Rachels’s arguments are flawed, and we have good reasons to think that intention is important in understanding the moral nature of actions. As such, we should reject any understanding of passive euthanasia that does not pay attention to intent. SHORT CONCLUSION: James Rachels’s work on active and passive euthanasia has been immensely influential; but this is an influence that we ought to resist. BioMed Central 2020-05-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7227198/ /pubmed/32410605 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020-00481-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Debate
Brassington, Iain
What passive euthanasia is
title What passive euthanasia is
title_full What passive euthanasia is
title_fullStr What passive euthanasia is
title_full_unstemmed What passive euthanasia is
title_short What passive euthanasia is
title_sort what passive euthanasia is
topic Debate
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7227198/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32410605
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12910-020-00481-7
work_keys_str_mv AT brassingtoniain whatpassiveeuthanasiais