Tony Bland
- Hillsborough disaster
- Could no longer see, hear or feel and had to be fed by a tube
- Brain stem still functioned, so he wasn’t clinically dead
- Hospital had to apply for a court order allowing him to die
James Rachels
Argues passive euthanasia is much worse because of how long and drawn out it is
Acts vs omissions example
We don’t have samaritans law in the uk, meaning that you don’t actually have to do anything if you saw a child drowning in the uk, given it’s not your child
Grisez and Boyle
Reject the view that a person can be bodily alive yet not a person — a person in a PVS is still a person
Up to what proportion of people in a PVS could have awareness?
20%
Vitalism
Living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living organisms because they contain different properties to inanimate things
Tracy and Robert Latimer
- “it was pointless to torture our daughter any further”
- Killed his child with Carbon monoxide
What do many cite as the alternative to euthanasia?
Palliative care
Helga Kuhse
- Challenges slippery slope argument
- The only reason you euthanise is for mercy and respect — it’s not like Nazi Germany
Daniel Maguire
- We shouldn’t always be expected to prolong life
- It’s important to respect life, but if God alone decides when we die, surely that makes us nothing more than God’s property
- How is intervening to save life allowed but intervening to end it is different? Either way we’re playing God
Jonathan Glover
Refusing to help someone die is a serious denial of their autonomy over their own life and death
Hippocrates
In some cases doctors shouldn’t provide treatment if the patient is “over mastered by their disease”
Fletcher’s criteria for personhood
- Self awareness
- Minimal intelligence
- Self control
- Sense of time passing
- Communication
- Curiosity
- Concern for others
- Etc. etc
- The more of these you have, the more of a “person” you are, says Fletcher
Fletcher on down’s syndrome
“A Down’s is not a person”
Dr Jack Kevorkian
- “suicide machine”, or thanatron
- Imprisoned after sending a video of this machine to CBS
- Either seen as a pioneer for supporters, or a murderer to those opposed
- Claimed to have assisted at least 130 to die
Epictetus
Said euthanasia and suicide were both acceptable options for those who have no quality of life
John Wyatt
- Idea of humans being made in God’s image comes with implications
- Means we’re dependent on God for our lives
- Means humans are in a relationship with God
- Means all humans have a certain dignity associated with them
Jeremiah 10:23
‘A man’s life is not his own’
Stanley Hauerwas
- End of life medicine now is a “tragic moral art”
- It means that our society finds it harder to face death than previous societies did because we believe medicine can give us a longer life and a more painless death
- This makes us more drawn to euthanasia
Ecclesiastes 8:8
‘no one has power over the day of his death’
Judges 9 (not a quote)
To avoid the indignity of dying to a woman, a man asks his armour-bearer to thrust him with his sword
Proportionalism
- Controversial natural law revision
- There can be proportionally good reason to make exceptions to secondary precepts
- Medicine can become cruel in its extension of human life
