Objections from the medical profession to being seen or utilised as “killers” rather than saviours of human life, as well as the sometimes well-founded fear of the possible abuse of physician assisted suicide or voluntary active euthanasia, is a further reason. The value bestowed on human life in all religious traditions and almost all cultures, such as the prohibition on murder is so pervasive that it is an element of common, and not statutory, law. There are a number of reasons for the opposition to physician assisted suicide or voluntary active euthanasia. Both clearly are observable and describable actions, and both are the direct causes of the patient’s death. The reason simply is the credibility of arguing that administering a lethal agent is “active”, but terminating life support (for example switching off a ventilator) is “passive”. However, the moral significance of the distinction between “active” and “passive” euthanasia is increasingly questioned by ethicists. It is passive in the sense that nothing is “actively” done to kill the patient, but that nothing is done to deter the process of dying either, and that the termination of life-support which is clearly futile, is permitted. The term “voluntary active euthanasia” suggests that there also is a passive form of euthanasia. I will not deal with the issue of involuntary euthanasia –where the suffering patient’s life is terminated without their explicit consent -– a procedure which, to my mind, is ethically much more problematic. The latter procedure is also referred to as “voluntary active euthanasia” (VAE). If incapable of doing so, the physician – on request of the patient – administers the lethal substance which terminates the patient’s life. Here a suffering and terminal patient is assisted by a physician to gain access to a lethal substance which the patient himself or herself takes or administers.

Assisted death can take the form of physician assisted suicide (PAS).

The life we bury author