Abstract
It has turned out in this anthology to be a controversial question how the Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine is best interpreted with respect to the active/passive distinction. Of course, there are two aspects to this question, one descriptive and one methodological. The former deals with how the adherents of the doctrine are to be understood, when they defend it. Do they rely on the active/passive distinction or not? The second has to do with normative plausibility. Will the Sanctity-of-Life Doctrine be more or less plausible, if it is taken to rely on the active/passive distinction? It is to the latter question I turn here.
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Notes
See my Hedonistic Utilitarianism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998), Chapter 2 about this.
Dan W. Brock, Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 209. The passage is quoted by Brock in Chapter 7 of this book, p. 72.
See p. 61 of this book.
Jonathan Glover: Causing Death and Saving Lives, Harmondworth: Penguin Books, 1977, p. 90.
Airedale NHS Trust v. Bland (1993).
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: Declaration on Euthanasia, Vatican City, 1980, p. 6; reprinted in the index of this book, p. 136.
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, op. cit., pp. 8–9; reprinted in the index of this book, p. 138.
Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, op. cit., p. 10; reprinted in the index of this book, p. 139.
Linda Gannzini et al., ’Nurses’ Experience with Hospice Patients Who Refuse Food and Fluids to Hasten Death’, The New England Journal of Medicine, Vol. 349, July 24, 2003, No. 4, pp. 359–365.
Quill, T.E.I, and Boyck, I.R. ’Responding to Intractable Terminal Suffering: The Role of Terminal Sedation and Voluntary Refusal of Food and Fluids’, Ann Intern Med. 2000;132:408–414.
See his in Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974).
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Tännsjö, T. (2004). The Sanctity of Life and the Active/Passive Distinction. In: Tännsjö, T. (eds) Terminal Sedation: Euthanasia in Disguise?. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-2124-4_11
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