In “Is Killing No Worse than Letting Die?”, Winston Nesbitt argues why euthanasia is morally impressible. The main argument that Nesbitt provides for this claim is that killing and letting die are not morally equally. I will be arguing that euthanasia is morally permissible and that Nesbitt’s argument fails by showing that killing and letting die are morally equal.
In “Active and Passive Euthanasia”, James Rachels argued that euthanasia is morally permissible because killing and letting die are morally equal. James Rachels brought up an interesting case where two individuals are involved. In the first case, Smith will benefit a large inheritance if anything happens to his six-years-old cousin. As a result, Smith kills his cousin by drowning…show more content… Based on the consequence of the action, both passive and active killing have the same result, as a result, society is affected the same way no matter which action one chooses. Consequently, if society is affected the same way by both actions, then both actions are equally as threatening to society. As a result, it would be inaccurate to assume that the preference of a Jones like person would be less threatening to society than a preference of a Smith like person. As a result, the second premise of Nesbitt’s argument is false. Based on this, we can confirm that killing and letting die are morally equal.
To conclude, in “Is Killing No Worse than Letting Die?”, Winston Nesbitt argues that killing is morally equal to letting die. His argument uses the case of Smith and Jones. Nesbitt says that killing is worse because Smith is more of a threat to society compared to Jones since Smith actively killed a person while Jones did not. However, since both of the action had the same consequences, society was impacted the same way, so we are not able to say that one type of person would be less of a threat to society than the other. As a result, killing and letting die are morally the same since the consequence is the
