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the ability to reason may not even qualify as a person it is wrong to terminate persons with worthwhile lives but not wrong to kill these whose lives are not worth living. Dr. Q recommends Mary's serious mental disability which renders her unable to think rationally & make decisions her life is not worth living, her continuous care is waste of health care resources which could be better spend on someone with intact mental faculties. So if permitted by law should be ended her life. This is ethically wrong.
Dr. I (nviolability life) dis agress with both & offer an ethical middle way explans human life is neither an absolute good nor merely an instrumental good but is basic good & others such as friendship knowledge & the enjoyment of art & beauty.
Thinking that keep able person and kill useless person is wrong as if human is a furniture throw it if it is of no use. You can't treat person like factory product.
If not possible to alleviate suffering, treatment is futile no hope of therapeutic benefit or would involve excessive burns to the patient excessive pain or expense there is duty of doctor to treat patient. Human life is basic aspect of human flourishing is not money like instrumental value & must be respected & must never be intentionaly shortened. Human life is not a mere means to an end & that it must never be intentionally taken but need to be preserved at all costs.
Angels is baby born with Down's syndrome & an intentional blockage can be removed by a straight forward surgical operation & if it is not so removed Angela will die.
Dr. V. life must be preserved at all costs blockage should be removed so that Angela will live.
Dr. Q. life is not worth living so blockage should not be removed is wrong view as treatment would be successful & it would save life. Jainas- you have no right to take life if you cant give Dr. l-operation should go ahead treatment will involve only minimal burdens such as usual risk & discomfort associated with surgery.
Different people adopt different approaches to the valuation of human life.
Law has never accepted quality of life that only those with worthwhile lives have a right to live. But law has traditionally adopted the inviolability it has always been murder for a doctor actively & intentionally to hasten patients death.
It is murder however compassionate the motive of the doctor whatever age health condition, or wishes of the patient to kill aged, terminally ill, cancer patient who pleads for death as it is to kill a young
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