The physician needs to recognize that, although life should be preserved, there comes a point where the end is inevitably coming, and there may not be much point to delaying its painful arrival with aggressive treatment. According to such a conception, the physician should do all possible to alleviate the patient's pain and, when even this is impossible, help end the patient's life if the patient so wishes. The Oath, then, potentially supports two worthy goals, but does not suggest how to resolve them when they come into conflict, as they do in this episode. Today, many physicians have come to believe that prolonged, life-sustaining treatment is not always in the patient's best interest, even if providing such treatment would mean life over death. Passive euthanasia implies a cessation of medical intervention to support life, such as not rescicitating a patient in cardiac arrest or withholding antibiotics to treat an infection.
Active euthanasia denotes an act that directly produces death, such as a lethal injection.
The important difference between active and passive euthanasia is that, in passive euthanasia, the doctor does not do anything to bring about the patient's death. The doctor does nothing, and the patient dies of whatever ills already afflict him. This distinction between passive and active euthanasia, is, not surprisingly, the object of heated debate and it can certainly be argued that, from a moral point of view, there is not much difference between the two. However, from the legal point of view, the United States recognizes a very big difference between active and passive euthanasia, outlawing the first and permitting the second. In the United States today, passive euthanasia is a legally accepted way of dealing with end of life care, whereas active euthanasia is illegal in every state.