Passive Euthanasia: Good or Bad
Active euthanasia refers to a medical professional, or other qualified person, actively doing something that causes a patient to die. Passive euthanasia refers to when a patient dies due to lack of action on the behalf of the medical professionals or them ceasing proper care that would otherwise keep the patient alive.
Currently, it is morally acceptable to follow the principle of passive euthanasia, yet unacceptable to engage in active euthanasia. What will be discussed is whether or not passive euthanasia should be morally unacceptable as well, or continue as a valid option.
PROS CONS
Patient may be able to pass away sooner and does not have to experience the pain they are in for an extended period of time.
May provide patient with a sense of empowerment after the lack of power they felt as they’ve faced the fatal disease.
Relieve guilt and shame that patient feels of making their family feel emotionally strained.
Save the patients family money, because no more costly treatments are being implemented.
Patients may end up experiencing a greater amount of pain than if they were kept on the treatment until they passed away.
Patient/Family may be pressured into thinking that passive euthanasia is the only/best option.
May cause a patient to undergo chronic depression in the last days of their life.
Reveals that the patient’s family viewed the patient’s quality of life more important then the maintenance of life.
Presents religious dilemmas for the doctor or patient who may view this as suicide.
From a doctor’s stand point it would be emotionally depleting to see your patient suffer from causes that you know can at least be partially treated.
Allows physician’s time and resources to be better spent elsewhere.
From a doctor’s stand point you realize that even though you can’t take the death away, you can at least give your patient or their family what they really want.

“The intentional termination of the life of one human being by another-mercy killingis contrary to that for which the medical profession stands and is contrary to the policy of the American Medical Association.
The cessation of the employment of extraordinary means to prolong the life of the body when there is irrefutable evidence that biological death is imminent is the decision of the patient and/or his immediate family. The advice and judgment of the physician should be freely available to the patient and/or his immediate family.”
House of Delegates
Vs
“When surgery is denied [the doctor] must try to keep the infant from suffering while natural forces sap the baby’s life away. It is easy at a conference, in a theoretical discussion, to decide that such infants should be allowed to die. It is altogether different to stand by in the nursery and watch as dehydration and infection wither a tiny being over hours and days. This is a terrible ordeal for the hospital staff-much and me more so than for the parents who never set foot in the nursery.
American Medical Association
December 4, 1973
Anthony Shaw, MD
“Doctor, Do We have a Choice?”
New York Times Magazine
January 30, 1972
(On babies with down syndrome and multiple congenital defects)

The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism: “Ultimately the euthanasia debate is about whom we are as human beings. Are we masters of ourselves, if not of our universe, or are we more like subjects of a ruler whose reasoning we struggle to understand?”
Sarah Palin: “The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of
Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
Be not overly wicked, neither be a fool. Why should you die before your time? Ecclesiastes 7:17
ACLU Amicus Brief in Vacco v. Quill: “The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of this right is as central to personal autonomy and bodily integrity as rights safeguarded by this
Court's decisions relating to marriage, family relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the refusal or termination of life-saving medical treatment.”
Philip Nitschke, MD: "Over time the Hippocratic Oath has been modified on a number of occasions as some of its tenets became less and less acceptable. References to women not studying medicine and doctors not breaking the skin have been deleted. The much-quoted reference to 'do no harm' is also in need of explanation. Does not doing harm mean that we should prolong a life that the patient sees as a painful burden?
Surely, the 'harm' in this instance is done when we prolong the life, and
'doing no harm' means that we should help the patient die. Killing the patient--technically, yes. Is it a good thing--sometimes, yes. Is it consistent with good medical end-of-life care: absolutely yes."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20420798 http://books.google.com/books?id=yxNgXs3TkJYC&printsec=frontcover&source=g bs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=Ee_VYiK_vMUC&oi=fnd&pg=PA77& dq=euthanasia&ots=w_lFF5nxe5&sig=RvtkBHdN9gC-yw3-Ovtas8F-
2eA#v=onepage&q=euthanasia&f=true http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/activepassive_1.shtml
http://books.google.com/books?id=PjHpKENlSd8C&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=Anth ony+Shaw+%27Doctor,+Do+we+have+a+choice?%27&source=bl&ots=yKuZVIbdT4
&sig=kHB0zEsDbm6TRq_Zgd5bB9PWc60&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6OgkU8-
_K8W22gXQ7IGgDw&ved=0CCoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Anthony%20Shaw%20'
Doctor%2C%20Do%20we%20have%20a%20choice%3F'&f=false http://euthanasia.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=000126