Is there an ethical difference between actively killing someone and letting someone die?

Using the idea of euthanasia, people think that it is acceptable to withhold treatment and allow a patient to die, but that it is never acceptable to kill a patient by a deliberate act. Some medical people like this idea. They think it allows them to provide a patient with the death they want without having to deal with the difficult moral problems they would face if they deliberately killed that person. “Thou shalt not kill but needst not strive, officiously, to keep alive”, Arthur Hugh Clough (1819-1861).

But some people think this distinction is nonsense, since killing someone is a deliberate act, and so is deciding not to save someone. In active killing, a person is required to take an action with the intention that it will cause the death. In passive killing, a person lets someone die. However, this person is required to carry out an action (to not act) with the intention that it will cause death. So there is no real difference between passive and active killing, since both have the same result: the death of a person. Thus the act of not saving someone is just as much an act of killing as dealing the killing blow.

However, the doctrine of acts and omissions states that there is a moral difference between carrying out an action, and merely omitting to carry out an action. The philosopher James Rachels has an argument that shows that the distinction between acts and omissions is not useful in some cases:

Smith will inherit a fortune if his 6 year old cousin dies. One evening Smith sneaks into the bathroom where the child is having his bath and drowns the boy. Smith then arranges the evidence so that it looks like an accident.

Jones will inherit a fortune if his 6 year old cousin dies. One evening Jones sneaks into the bathroom where the child is having his bath. As he enters the bathroom he sees the boy fall over, hit his head on the side of the bath and slide face-down under the water. Jones is delighted; he doesn't rescue the child but stands by the bath, and watches as the child drowns.

This doctrine is currently the position of the law. There is no obligation to save someone but you are classed a murderer if you actively kill someone. However, most people would say that this difference between their moral guilt is nil.

In my opinion, although there might be a moral difference between these cases, there is not an ethical reason to distinguish the two. Therefore, you would only be justified in stopping both of these building works, or allowing them both to go ahead.

09/03/2011