critical thinking
1. Why is active euthanasia preferable to passive euthanasia in cases such as a patient dying from an extremely painful and incurable cancer of the throat?2. How does the conventional moral doctrine of allowing passive euthanasia and prohibiting active euthanasia lead people to make decisions concerning life and death on irrelevant grounds?3. What conclusion about the moral difference between killing and letting die follows from the parallel examples of Smith and his six-year old cousin, and Jones and his six-year-old cousin?4. Why is it a mistake to claim that passive euthanasia is not the intentional termination of life?5. Why is it false to say that in passive euthanasia the doctor does not, in a moral sense, do anything?6. Is there a moral distinction between giving someone the means to end their own life, and you ending it for them (at their request)? Legally there is, but is the distinction defensible ethically?
