Euthanasia Analysis

Euthanasia is killing someone out of pure concern for that patient, Euthanasia can either be passive euthanasia or active euthanasia. Passive Euthanasia is merely when the patient dies because the medical professionals either don’t do something in order to keep the patient alive, or either they stop doing something that is keeping the patient alive. In other words, in the case of passive euthanasia is simply allowing the patient to die, and not deliberately killing them. For example, if the doctor doesn’t give the patient a surgery or medication in order to keep the patient alive, or if the doctor unplugs the patient from a machine that was keeping the patient alive. Active Euthanasia is when a person or medical professional directly and purposely

However, we also take into consideration that Hooker is a mixed utilitarian, which means that he thinks happiness and autonomy should be maximized; making it more than just one type of thing having moral value. According to Hooker, his essay considers Euthanasia from the perspective of rule-utilitarianism; which “assess possible rules in terms of their expected utility” (Hooker 76). Hooker starts by talking about three different kinds of euthanasia, the first type that he discusses is voluntary euthanasia. An example of this would be a patient that was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and told that they didn’t have long, and so they then simply asked that if they were to become unaware they were even alive, that they gave permission to either let someone kill them or to simply let them die. The person asking to be killed or simply let die makes it voluntary. Another type of Euthanasia he discusses is non-voluntary euthanasia. An example of this would be that someone got into a bad car wreck, and was unresponsive in a coma state of mind, and someone killed the patient or simply let him/her die. This in turn would make it non-voluntary because the patient didn’t ask to be killed or to let die. One last type of euthanasia that Hooker discusses is involuntary euthanasia. An example of this would be that a patient plainly requested that no matter how bad their illness got, they requested that they not be purposely killed or purposely let die. If someone were to ignore these wishes and kill him/her because they thought their conditions were severe, then that would make it involuntary euthanasia. In knowing these three different types of euthanasia, Hooker said we then have Active Voluntary Euthanasia, Active Non-Voluntary Euthanasia, Active Involuntary Euthanasia, Passive Voluntary Euthanasia, Passive Non-Voluntary Euthanasia, and Passive