Active Voluntary Euthanasia

EUTHANASIA: A GLOBAL ISSUE
Euthanasia has acquired a number of different labels. For example, euthanasia can be voluntary or involuntary, passive or active. Passive voluntary euthanasia occurs when, in accord with a terminally ill patient's expressed wish, life-supports are removed and the patient is permitted to die "naturally" or "as a consequence of the disease." Some patients die immediately; others linger on for hours or days finally dying from dehydration and starvation. Involuntary euthanasia—that is the bringing about of a person's death without the consent of the person—is almost always treated as homicide, even when the act can be recognized as producing a "merciful death."
Active voluntary euthanasia (often termed "aid-in-dying") refers to death
Physicians, who support and honor the right of terminally ill patients to choose the time and mode of their demise, may participate surreptitiously in the patient's death. The medical mode of ending the patient's life in accord with the patient's will is by increasing morphine dosage under the guise of seeking to control pain. Of course the physician knows that the morphine will have a "double effect" and kill the patient, but it is assumed that doctor's intent was not to kill but to ease suffering. Therefore, when frail, elderly, terminally ill, individuals request euthanasia, some medical personnel will cooperate by increasing the morphine dosage in the assurance that they will be protected from litigation by the "double effect" argument. These physicians believe that to prolong the life of a terminally ill and suffering person by drug therapy, blood transfusions or surgical intervention is