Active versus Passive Euthanasia

Euthanasia is ending a human life or killing an individual with the objective to stop his or her suffering, through active or passive approaches. Active euthanasia involves decisions made by family members and medical professionals to actively end the suffering of a patient and his or her life through methods such as lethal injection. Passive euthanasia is allowing patient to die by holding back or withdrawing medical care, such as failing to perform life-extending operations or detaching an individual from the life-support machines.
There is a significant moral distinction between active and passive euthanasia with the former being always forbidden while the latter is sometimes permissible. In the context of active euthanasia, the involvement of an agent (person) that object to cause death renders the approach morally unacceptable because it entails an individual deliberately seeking to kill another. In some circumstances, passive euthanasia is morally acceptable because a disease process is the agent or cause of death rather than an individual directly causing the death. From the moral perspective, passive euthanasia can be considered an acceptable alternative as opposed to active euthanasia primarily due to involved means causing the patients death. However, active euthanasia is supported by different arguments based on prevention of suffering, enhancement of liberty, and quality of life, among other concepts (Corr, Nabe and Corr 534).
Passive euthanasia is no worse than active euthanasia because letting an individual die can be equated with killing someone. Both doctrines are based on the aspects of letting someone die and killing someone that lacks moral significance, particularly in the attempts to establish basis for allowing the practice of one (passive) while prohibiting the other (active euthanasia). Furthermore, intentionally withholding from sustaining someones life and intentionally doing something to cause death of an individual do not reflect any moral dissimilarity. As such, active and passive euthanasia lacks relevant grounds for decision-making regarding an individuals life and death (McGrath para.2).
 Works Cited
Corr, Charles A, Clyde M Nabe and Donna M Corr. Death and Dying, Life and Living. Belmont, CA: Cengage Learning, 2009.
McGrath, Jennifer. Active Versus Passive Euthanasia. 2009. <http://voices.yahoo.com/active-versus-passive-euthanasia-3312580.html>. 5 June 2013.