Unfit for the Future argues that the future of our species depends on radical enhancement of the moral aspects of our nature. Population growth and technological advances are threatening to undermine the conditions of worthwhile life on earth forever. We need to modify the biological bases of human motivation to deal with this challenge.

David Shaw presents a new argument to support the old claim that there is not a significant moral difference between killing and letting die and, by implication, between active and passive euthanasia. He concludes that doctors should not make a distinction between them. However, whether or not killing and letting die are morally equivalent is not as important a question as he suggests. One can justify legal distinctions on non-moral grounds. One might oppose physician- assisted suicide and active euthanasia when (...) performed by doctors on patients whether or not one is in favour of the legalisation of assisted suicide and active euthanasia. Furthermore, one can consider particular actions to be contrary to appropriate professional conduct even in the absence of legal and ethical objections to them. Someone who wants to die might want only a doctor to kill him or to help him to kill himself. However, we are not entitled to everything that we want in life or death. A doctor cannot always fittingly provide all that a patient wants or needs. It is appropriate that doctors provide their expert advice with regard to the performance of active euthanasia but they can and should do so while, qua doctors, they remain hors de combat. (shrink)

There is as yet no widely agreed-upon solution to the standard textbook problem whether actively shutting off a life-sustaining medical device, e.g. a respirator, and thus bringing about a patient9s death amounts to active killing or just to an omission of further treatment. Apart from a range of astutely contrived case examples and respective particular solutions proposed in the literature, there seems to be no consensus on the normative principles such solutions should be grounded in, not even on the need (...) for such principles beyond sheer intuition. The present paper attempts to develop a normative approach based on fundamental principles of law. From this perspective, what is decisive for the question of ‘killing or letting die’ in such cases is not that death ensues from a behaviour that is active and relevantly causative, but rather, whether or not the agent in performing the deadly act transgresses the boundaries of the domain of his or her sole normative authority, and thereby intervenes in the protected sphere of another. Unless he or she does so, their behaviour cannot be classified as active commission regardless of the amount of causal activity it may display and regardless of its potentially harmful consequences. This conception is spelled out in detail and tested in a range of case examples, as are several of its corollaries that deviate from standard type solutions. (shrink)

Coggon’s remarks on a previous paper on active and passive euthanasia elicit a clarification and an elaboration of the argument in support of the claim that there is a moral difference between killing and letting die. The relevant moral duties are different in nature, strength and content. Moreover, not all people who are involved in the relevant situations have the same moral duties. The particular case that is presented in support of the claim that to kill is not the same (...) as to let die is based upon a rejection of consequentialism. (shrink)