holy king
Deity
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/feb/01/terry-pratchett-euthanasia-tribunals
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/activepassive_1.shtml
what do you think?
Sir Terry Pratchett calls for euthanasia tribunals
The author Sir Terry Pratchett is calling for euthanasia tribunals to give sufferers from incurable diseases the right to medical help to end their lives.
Pratchett will insist in his Dimbleby lecture, to be broadcast tonight, that "the time is really coming" for legalising assisted death.
Two polls published today back his views. Of more than 1,000 people interviewed for a BBC Panorama programme, 73% believed friends or relatives should be able to assist the suicide of a terminally ill loved one. A YouGov poll of 2,053 people for the Telegraph produced even stronger support, with 80% saying that relatives should not be prosecuted, and 75% backing a change in the law.
Pratchett, author of the bestselling Discworld fantasy novels, was diagnosed two years ago with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease a discovery he memorably described, when he broke the news on the Discworld News website, as "an embuggerance".
In his lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, the author will volunteer to be a test case before a euthanasia tribunal himself.
The tribunal panels would include a legal expert in family matters and a doctor with experience of serious long-term illness.
"If granny walks up to the tribunal and bangs her walking stick on the table and says 'Look, I've really had enough, I hate this bloody disease, and I'd like to die thank you very much young man', I don't see why anyone should stand in her way."
He said there was no evidence from countries where assisted dying is allowed of granny being coerced into dying so relatives could get their hands on her money.
"Choice is very important in this matter. But there will be some probably older, probably wiser GPs, who will understand. The tribunal would be acting for the good of society as well as that of the applicant and ensure they are of sound and informed mind, firm in their purpose, suffering from a life-threatening and incurable disease and not under the influence of a third party.
"If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice."
His lecture comes a week after Kay Gilderdale was cleared of attempted murder for helping her 31-year-old daughter, Lynn, to commit suicide following years of suffering from the chronic fatigue syndrome ME.
However, days earlier Frances Inglis, who killed her 22-year-old son by heroin injection believing he was left in a "living hell" after severe brain damage in a road accident, was found guilty of murder and sentenced by majority verdict to a minimum of nine years in jail.
Pratchett is the first novelist invited to deliver the annual BBC lecture, the 34th in honour of the veteran broadcaster Richard Dimbleby.
He has already criticised the existing law and the risk faced by any relatives who help a family member to die of being charged with murder.
Of his own Alzheimer's, he said: "It is not nice and I do not wish to be there for the endgame." He is a patron of the Alzheimer's Research Trust, and has donated £500,000 of his own money for research.
"I don't think people are particularly bothered about death, it's the life before death that worries us," he said in a recent BBC television interview.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/euthanasia/overview/activepassive_1.shtml
Active and passive euthanasia
Active euthanasia
Active euthanasia occurs when the medical professionals, or another person, deliberately do something that causes the patient to die.
Passive euthanasia
Passive euthanasia occurs when the patient dies because the medical professionals either don't do something necessary to keep the patient alive, or when they stop doing something that is keeping the patient alive.
switch off life-support machines
disconnect a feeding tube
don't carry out a life-extending operation
don't give life-extending drugs
The moral difference between killing and letting die
Many people make a moral distinction between active and passive euthanasia.
They think that it is acceptable to withhold treatment and allow a patient to die, but that it is never acceptable to kill a patient by a deliberate act.
Some medical people like this idea. They think it allows them to provide a patient with the death they want without having to deal with the difficult moral problems they would face if they deliberately killed that person.
Spoiler :
This is one of the classic ideas in ethics. It says that there is a moral difference between carrying out an action, and merely omitting to carry out an action.
Simon Blackburn explains it like this in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
The doctrine that it makes an ethical difference whether an agent actively intervenes to bring about a result, or omits to act in circumstances in which it is foreseen that as a result of the omission the same result occurs.
Thus suppose I wish you dead, if I act to bring about your death I am a murderer, but if I happily discover you in danger of death, and fail to act to save you, I am not acting, and therefore, according to the doctrine, not a murderer.
Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
But the acts and omissions doctrine doesn't always work...
The killings in the bath
The philosopher James Rachels has an argument that shows that the distinction between acts and omissions is not as helpful as it looks. Consider these two cases:
Smith will inherit a fortune if his 6 year old cousin dies.
One evening Smith sneaks into the bathroom where the child is having his bath and drowns the boy.
Smith then arranges the evidence so that it looks like an accident.
Jones will inherit a fortune if his 6 year old cousin dies.
One evening Jones sneaks into the bathroom where the child is having his bath.
As he enters the bathroom he sees the boy fall over, hit his head on the side of the bath, and slide face-down under the water.
Jones is delighted; he doesn't rescue the child but stands by the bath, and watches as the child drowns.
According to the doctrine of acts and omissions Smith is morally guiltier than Jones, since he actively killed the child, while Jones just allowed the boy to die. In law Smith is guilty of murder and Jones isn't guilty of anything.
However, most people would regard any distinction between their moral guilt as splitting hairs.
Suppose Jones defends himself by saying:
I didn't do anything except just stand there and watch the child drown. I didn't kill him; I only let him die.
Would we be impressed?
An objection to this analogy
You might argue that we can't compare the case of a doctor who is trying to do their best for their patient with Smith and Jones who are obvious villains.
Of course you can't. But if you don't find the difference between killing and letting die persuasive in the Smith/Jones case, you shouldn't find it effective in the case of the well-meaning doctor and euthanasia.
The importance of intention
The Smith/Jones case partly depends on us paying no attention to the intentions of Smith and Jones. But in most cases of right and wrong we do think that intention matters, and if we were asked, we would probably say that Smith was a worse person than Jones, because he intended to kill.
Consider this case (and yes, it's a fantasy, doctors don't behave like this):
Brown is rushed into hospital after being stabbed.
He arrives in casualty. Although he is bleeding heavily, he could be saved.
The only doctor on duty wants to go home, and knows that saving Brown will take him an hour.
He decides to let Brown bleed to death.
Brown dies a few minutes later.
Brown's mother arrives, and on learning what has happened screams at the doctor, "You killed my son!"
The doctor replies, "No I didn't. I just let him die."
No-one would think that the doctor's reply excused him in any way. In this case letting someone die is morally very bad indeed.
And if the lazy doctor defended himself to Brown's mother by saying, "I didn't kill him. The dagger in his heart killed him," we wouldn't think this an adequate moral argument either.
You can probably invent many similar examples.
But there are cases where letting someone die might not be morally bad.
Suppose that the reason the doctor didn't save Brown was that he was already in the middle of saving Green, and if he left Green to save Brown, Green would die. In that case, we might think that the doctor had a good defence against accusations of unethical behaviour.
Simon Blackburn explains it like this in the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy:
The doctrine that it makes an ethical difference whether an agent actively intervenes to bring about a result, or omits to act in circumstances in which it is foreseen that as a result of the omission the same result occurs.
Thus suppose I wish you dead, if I act to bring about your death I am a murderer, but if I happily discover you in danger of death, and fail to act to save you, I am not acting, and therefore, according to the doctrine, not a murderer.
Simon Blackburn, Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy
But the acts and omissions doctrine doesn't always work...
The killings in the bath
The philosopher James Rachels has an argument that shows that the distinction between acts and omissions is not as helpful as it looks. Consider these two cases:
Smith will inherit a fortune if his 6 year old cousin dies.
One evening Smith sneaks into the bathroom where the child is having his bath and drowns the boy.
Smith then arranges the evidence so that it looks like an accident.
Jones will inherit a fortune if his 6 year old cousin dies.
One evening Jones sneaks into the bathroom where the child is having his bath.
As he enters the bathroom he sees the boy fall over, hit his head on the side of the bath, and slide face-down under the water.
Jones is delighted; he doesn't rescue the child but stands by the bath, and watches as the child drowns.
According to the doctrine of acts and omissions Smith is morally guiltier than Jones, since he actively killed the child, while Jones just allowed the boy to die. In law Smith is guilty of murder and Jones isn't guilty of anything.
However, most people would regard any distinction between their moral guilt as splitting hairs.
Suppose Jones defends himself by saying:
I didn't do anything except just stand there and watch the child drown. I didn't kill him; I only let him die.
Would we be impressed?
An objection to this analogy
You might argue that we can't compare the case of a doctor who is trying to do their best for their patient with Smith and Jones who are obvious villains.
Of course you can't. But if you don't find the difference between killing and letting die persuasive in the Smith/Jones case, you shouldn't find it effective in the case of the well-meaning doctor and euthanasia.
The importance of intention
The Smith/Jones case partly depends on us paying no attention to the intentions of Smith and Jones. But in most cases of right and wrong we do think that intention matters, and if we were asked, we would probably say that Smith was a worse person than Jones, because he intended to kill.
Consider this case (and yes, it's a fantasy, doctors don't behave like this):
Brown is rushed into hospital after being stabbed.
He arrives in casualty. Although he is bleeding heavily, he could be saved.
The only doctor on duty wants to go home, and knows that saving Brown will take him an hour.
He decides to let Brown bleed to death.
Brown dies a few minutes later.
Brown's mother arrives, and on learning what has happened screams at the doctor, "You killed my son!"
The doctor replies, "No I didn't. I just let him die."
No-one would think that the doctor's reply excused him in any way. In this case letting someone die is morally very bad indeed.
And if the lazy doctor defended himself to Brown's mother by saying, "I didn't kill him. The dagger in his heart killed him," we wouldn't think this an adequate moral argument either.
You can probably invent many similar examples.
But there are cases where letting someone die might not be morally bad.
Suppose that the reason the doctor didn't save Brown was that he was already in the middle of saving Green, and if he left Green to save Brown, Green would die. In that case, we might think that the doctor had a good defence against accusations of unethical behaviour.
what do you think?
dose of morphine when everyone is in agrreement)...the problem, as usual, will come when the government begins deciding whom you can kill and whom u can allow to die....
