sucide as a major of reducing or aggravating suffering :a right to live human dignity

Imagine a society in which patients are routinely euthanized—whether they want their lives to end or not—if their suffering cannot be alleviated without dulling their consciousness, eliminating their independence, or threatening their dignity. In such a society, defenders of the status quo might argue that the duty to prevent suffering and indignity makes the policy imperative. A compelling response would be that, while suffering, indignity, and loss of independence are undesirable, only the person enduring them should decide whether they are unbearable. If a patient is competent to decide, nobody other than that patient should have the authority to decide whether life is worth continuing.

The so-called distinction between active and passive euthanasia ,active euthanasia is in many cases more humane than passive; second, the doctrine leads to decisions concerning life and death being made on irrelevant grounds; and third, the doctrine rests on a distinction between killing and letting die…