euthanasia

• euthanasia

  a good death / assisted dying
• principle of sanctity of life

  life is sacred(god given)

  preservation of human life is upmost importance, destruction of this is wrong
• quotes for sanctity of life

  "so god created man kind in his own image"-genisis 1:26-28

  "you knit me together in my mothers womb"-psalm 139:13-16

  "I was born with nothing and I will die with nothing. the lord gave and the lord has now taken away"-job 1:21
• personhood

  -capable of rational thought

  -consciousness

  -self awareness

  -morality

  -ability to survive independently

  -human genetic makeup
• genetic criterion

  you are a person if you have DNA (criticism:makes a red blood cell a person)
• cognitive criterion

  marry anne warren (personhood criteria)

  -consciousness

  -reasoning

  -self motivated activity

  -capacity to community

  -self awareness
• social criterion

  you are a person whenever society recognises you as a person, or when ever someone cares about you. (criticism: you could be fully rational healthy and functioning but not have personhood)
• moral agents

  when you have personhood
• Peter singer and personhood

  -sentience, the ability to feel pleasure or pain

  -speciesism - shouldn't discriminate against species

  -hugely against genetic criterion
• gradient theory of personhood

  personhood comes in a degree, you can have various amounts (e.g. a baby would have more than a human)
• active euthanasia (medical intervention)

  acting deliberately to bring about the death of a person (e.g. lethal injection)
• passive euthanasia (medical non-intervention)

  failing to prevent the death of a person when intervention is in the agents power (e.g. turning off life support)
• voluntary euthanasia

  intentional ending of a persons life at their request or consent
• non-voluntary euthanasia

  where a person cannot make a decision for themselves or is incapable of making their wishes known. it is judges by someone else
• involuntary euthanasia

  decision to euthanise a person against their wishes and consent
• slippery slope argument

  if you allow one case you may accept something that you wouldn't have before
• Hippocratic oath

  taken by doctors to vow to save lives. if someone dies you should have tried everything you could to save them