Citation

Allen FCL. Aust. Psychol. 1998; 33(1): 12-15.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1998, Australian Psychological Society, Publisher Wiley-Blackwell)

DOI

10.1080/00050069808257256

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Most people would define euthanasia as the deliberate ending of a life by a second person, either by act or omission, on the basis of the second person's judgment about the quality of that life. Usually, the life that is terminated cannot be sustained without intensive inpatient medical care, and occasionally the life is believed to be so burdensome and distressing as to not be worth living. These two judgments broadly encompass medical euthanasia. Ending a life on the basis of political judgment about the quality of the life in question -- that it is too costly or not sufficiently worthy to continue -- is social euthanasia. One of the objections to formalising and legalising the current practice of medical euthanasia is that this recognition will lead to toleration of deliberately ending the lives of members of minority ethnic or religious groups, the elderly, the psychiatrically disturbed, or the intellectually disabled -- the "slippery slope" argument.