‘EUTHANASIA’

Devised for service in a rhetoric of persuasion, the term ‘euthanasia’ has no generally accepted and philosophically warranted core of meaning.

The Dutch medical profession and civil authorities define euthanasia as: killing at the request of the person killed. But I shall call that voluntary euthanasia, and distinguish it from non–voluntary euthanasia (where the person killed is not capable of either making or refusing to make such a request) and involuntary euthanasia (where the person killed is capable of making such a request but has not done so). It is certain that deliberate killing of patients by Dutch medical personnel, with the more or less explicit permission of civil authority, extends well beyond cases where death has been requested by the person killed; the Dutch practice of euthanasia includes non–voluntary and perhaps some involuntary euthanasia. Rightly (as we shall see) the Dutch commonly reject as morally irrelevant the distinction sometimes drawn between ’active’ and ‘passive’ euthanasia, i.e. between killing by use of techniques or instrumentalities for hastening death, and killing by omitting to supply sustenance and/or treatment which, but for the decision and intent to terminate life, would been have supplied.