Allowing Mr. Broderick from Case Study #1 to die is a form of euthanasia. The term euthanasia means providing a painless death for a person who is seriously ill and/or dying. If the Broderick family decides to withhold medical treatment from Mr. Broderick, they are practicing passive euthanasia. They are refusing to interfere with the natural process of dying.

Many people are opposed to passive euthanasia because they think it may lead to active euthanasia. Active euthanasia involves the active participation of a person in helping another human to die.

Suppose a family decides that a relative is hopelessly ill. They instruct doctors to withhold further medical treatment. They have obviously concluded that this life is no longer worth saving. In that case, why should they not make an effort to actually end the person's life? Why should they not use poison, a gun, or some other means to hasten an end result they have already chosen for the person?

On the other hand, what if an ill and dying person asks for help to die? What if the medical treatment for your grandmother's cancer is not able to control the pain, and she begs you to help her die, because she cannot face another few months of pain? What if your uncle is less and less able to control his body due to multiple sclerosis, and he asks you to help him die because he is miserable facing his inability to take care of his personal needs or communicate with his family?

Questions about euthanasia represent a classic "slippery slope" argument. Once started on a course of action, how likely is it that other results will follow without our control? Once you have taken that first step on a slippery slope, how do you keep from sliding all the way down that slope, to who knows what end? If a terminally ill person can be helped to die, why not someone else with an incurable disease, or someone badly injured in an accident, or someone with a serious genetic disorder ... or perhaps simply an aging parent you no longer want to take care of?

These decisions are difficult. At least as difficult is another issue: Who makes the decision? Should choices like these be made by the patient? By family members? By close friends? By members of the medical profession? By judges? By government officials? As medical science makes more progress toward curing diseases, these questions are likely to become more and more common.