Custom essays on Euthanasia

Philippa Foot, an Emeritus Professor at the University of California is sure that nonvoluntary active euthanasia is not morally acceptable, but the rest forms of it, such as nonvoluntary passive euthanasia, voluntary passive euthanasia and voluntary active euthanasia are possible sometimes.
The author doesn’t agree with the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, which gives an explanation of euthanasia as a quite and easy death; or as a means of procuring a quite and easy death; or as the action of including a quite and easy death. Foot considers euthanasia to be a kind of murder and not just the manner of death, other way, the actions of Hitler when in September 1939, according to his wish, more than 275.000 were gassed in centers, can be also called euthanasia. Those people were killed because they were “useless” for Hitler and the manner of their deaths could not be understood as relatively easy and quiet. She also tries to find out what is euthanasia, so she asks the question if one man kills another, or allows him to die, thinking that he is in the last stages of a terrible disease, though in fact he could have been cured, is this an act of euthanasia or not? She is sure that to help a person to die without pain is an acceptable action, but to make euthanasia to a person who doesn’t ask about it (for example, in coma) is considered to be a murder.
All people have the right for life and none can take this right. There are no cases in which it would be right to kill a person against his wish for his own sake. But there are cases when there are circumstances in which one person’s life could be sacrificed to safe others, and euthanasia would be the only way out.
It is not permissible to kill a person against his will, even if it is for his own good. That is why, according to Philippa Foot, the nonvoluntary active euthanasia is morally unacceptable.

Works Cited

Cahn, Steven M., Markie, Peter. Ethics: History, Theory, and Contemporary Issues. (2008).