Euthanasia

Hippocratic Oath

‘do no harm’

‘do not administer deadly medicine’

Lord Chancellor and justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood

‘slippery slope towards death on command’

Alfie Evans

• infant diagnosed with degenerative neurological condition

• parents wanted to take him to Rome for further treatment, but court ruled life support could be turned off

  • ‘best interest of the child’

• treatment = ‘futile’ and ‘unkind and inhumane’

Tony Nicklinson

• locked in syndrome

• communicated through computer

• asked for voluntary euthanasia

• Parliament didn’t want to change law

• refused food for week and died of pneumonia

Tony Bland

• involved in disaster n Hillsborough stadium

  • sufferd brain damage →PVS

• no reasonable possibiliyt to emerge from a coma

• Sir Stephen ruled for first time in English Court that artificial feeding through tube = medical treatment

  • discontinue = good medical practice

• passive non-voluntary euthanasia

Dr Morr

• knowlingly prescribed lethal dosage of pain relief

• e.g. Mr Liddell: 85 yr old terminally ill patient

Singer

“Rethinking Life and Death'“

5 rational QOL commandments

Jonathan Glover

• have to be conscious for life to be worthwhile

• supports non-voluntary euthanasia for PVS patients

• “in a subjective respect, death concerns only consciousness’

Schopenhauer

unconscious = don’t experience life/ death

Helga Kuhse

• founded centre for Bioethics with Peter Singer

• challenges slippery slope argument

• e.g. active non-voluntary euthanasia practices by Nazis during Holocaust motivated neither by mercy nor respect for autonomy

10 Commandments

do not kill

Job

‘The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away’

Pope St John Paul

accepting euthanasia undermines SOL

develops culture of death

Mill’s harm principle

if not doing harm to other, no reason to interfere when doing harm to themselves