PHILOSOPHY - BIOETHICS 6: Is Lethal Injection Worse Than Pulling the Plug?

In this Wireless Philosophy video, we consider a central disagreement in the euthanasia debate: if a terminally-ill patient asks for help in dying, does it make a real ethical difference whether this request is carried out “actively” or “passively”?
View our Bioethics learning module and other videos in this series here: www.wi-phi.com/modules/bioeth...

[@SmileyEmoji42]

I think that ethics is entirely socialy constructed and, as such, what is ethical, is whatever society feels is ethical at any given time and place.
The modern world has just made the awkward edge cases far more obvious than in past times and eventually people will have to give up their naive hope in a consistent, all encompassing, set of ethical rules.

[@yurineri2227]

active Euthanasia, euthanasia breaks almost all bioethics principles out there
If a patient only has a fever and the patient asks for morphine and the doctor prescribes it, everyone will agree that is negligent and unethical, if the patient can decide whether or not he should continue living and a doctor that assists them with that are being negligent and acting without any ethical basis, and going way beyond the limits of bioethics firmly established in medicine
Most doctors are against euthanasia, and the founder of the first medical ethics research institute, Daniel Calahan presents the main counterarguments against euthanasia
1. The practice must be allowed with respect for the patient's autonomy
Callahan: If what matters is the patient's autonomy, then the patient should have the right to ask to be killed for any reason, even if he is not terminally ill and just has depression, but that would be absurd and would create a society where more people would die needlessly
And not why supporters of euthanasia say that there is no reason for it to happen, since the argument for autonomy presents no logical or legal barriers to the case, and we are also starting to have several cases of this happening
2. More euthanasia is limited to competent patients and is a form of compassion
Callaham: If euthanasia is a form of compassion, why discriminate between competent and non-competent patients, they both suffer in the same, if compassion is what allows patients to kill themselves or doctors to kill patients, then this should not be limited to competent patients only, as this would violate a medical ethical principle of justice (which is about treating similar cases in similar ways)
3- Euthanasia is a natural extension of the health system:
Here is a direct sentence Callaham arguing against that: "medicine does not have the ability or obligation to judge when life is no longer just worth living, doctors do not have objective means of evaluating this type of complaint from their patients, just as they do not have the right to act on such complaints."
My sources for Callaham's arguments form this Callaham dissertation called "When Self-Determination Runs Amok.", if you know English or use google translate it's pretty interesting, and if you're short on time this video is a good summary

[@chenphilosophy]

Good video. One thing I'll point out is that when a doctor removes life support at the request of the patient, it follows from the rule that patients with decision-making capacity may refuse life-saving interventions. And this follows from the principle of respect for autonomy. However, respecting autonomy does not mean that patients with capacity should get whatever medical interventions they want. So you may think that this is another difference between receiving euthanasia and removing life support.

[@buffgbob]

It is worse.