This occurs in capital punishment, natural disasters, and wartime conflict. Courts tackle the shades of meaning from these definitions. The court believed that helping some patients die and not others denied their 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law. Two ethical positions Peter Singer, an Australian educator and philosopher, examines assisted suicide from a utilitarian perspective in Rethinking Life and Death. The consequences or outcomes of an action drive utilitarian principles.
Utilitarians seek to maximize good and minimize harm.
From this perspective, prolonging death harms patients, going against nurses' responsibility to avoid maleficence. Patients have the right to ask not to suffer, and nurses have a duty to help. From Singer's perspective, assisted suicide and active euthanasia are more humane than passive euthanasia, which usually occurs later in the disease process after the patient endures further suffering. On the other hand, Daniel Callahan, Director of The Hastings Center in New York City, says turning to euthanasia and assisted suicide is a mistake in both direction and emphasis. 3 Callahan writes that even if a society were to support euthanasia, it couldn't give medical professionals the power directly and deliberately to take life.