Withdrawal of Treatment Versus Killing of Patients (IN: Intending Death: the Ethics of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, edited by T L Beauchamp)

The main focus of this paper is on the question of whether, from the moral perspective, the witholding or withdrawing of life-preserving therapy is significantly different than the administration of lethal drugs. The conclusion that the author argues towards is that there is a morally significant distinction between administering lethal drugs to patients & withholding/withdrawing therapy from them, a distinction based on the distinction between killing & letting die, but that both the meaning of those distinctions & their implications requires much further analysis.