w is the time for the medical profession to rally in defense of its fundamental moral principles, to repudiate any and all acts of direct and intentional killing by physicians and their agents. We call on the profession and its leadership to obtain the best advice, regarding both theory and practice, about how to defend the profession's moral center and to resist growing pressures both from without and from within. We call on fellow physicians to say that we will not deliberately kill. We must say also to each of our fellow physicians that we will not tolerate killing of patients and that we shall take disciplinary action against doctors who kill. (Chapman 209) Are there no conditions when life is meaningless and should be quietly ended? If a person is subject to pain that won't stop as a result of a disease that can't be cured, must he or she suffer that pain as long as possible when there are gentle ways of putting an end to life? If a person suffers from a disease that deprives him or her of all memory and makes him or her a helpless lump of flesh that may live on for years. If euthanasia were legalized, it should be admitted that there might be some abuses of virtually every social practice. There is no absolute guarantee against that. But we do not normally think that a social practice should be precluded simply because it might sometimes be abused. The crucial issue is whether the evil of the abuses would be so great as to outweigh the benefit of the practice. In the case of euthanasia, the question is whether the abuses, or the consequences generally, would be so numerous as to outweigh the advantages of legalization. The choice is not between a present policy that is benign and an alternative that is potentially dangerous. The present policy had it's evils, too. We spend more than a billion dollars a day for health car while our teachers are underpaid, and our industrial plants are rusty. This should not continue. There is somet...
