Euthanasia — Taking a Stand

O ne should not raise serious ethical questions . and then abandon them. And so I sense a responsibility, in the light of increasing public discussions throughout the world, to return to several questions I raised about euthanasia in an earlier editorial. Three years ago, I asked whether there are any moral limits to the measures a patient may request, or a doctor may use" to alleviate pain, suffering, and a lingering course of dying. I then cited what I called the dominion principle to name the claim that no human being has dominion over the life of another. Nevertheless, I admitted that citing this claim does not silence genuine questions. I proceeded to ask whether and how we know that this principle should hold without exception. More pointedly, I asked: "How can the constraint of the dominion principle be justified, when the act it prohibits, active euthanasia, appears, in some circumstances, desirable from every empirical view, and is, in fact, desired by everyone involved in a particular case? Is the authority of reason able to resolve this most important of our ethical questions, or does the dominion principle and its prohibition of active euthanasia rest rather on a belief?" (1). I shall now try to respond to these and several related questions.