Tuy nhiên, những bệnh nhân này không bao giờ có thể bị giết ngay cả khi điều trị sẽ không bao giờ cải thiện điều kiện, ngay cả khi bệnh nhân này không bao giờ có thể trải nghiệm những lợi ích của điều trị, và (ở Hoa Kỳ) ngay cả khi chăm sóc như vậy rõ ràng là không mong muốn của bệnh nhân. | 376 CHAPTER SEVEN mally can such patients be allowed to slip out of existence. In rare cases such patients can legally be allowed to die through legal proceedings initiated by the family and supported by medical personnel. But such patients can never be killed even if treatments will never improve conditions even if such patients can never experience the benefits of treatment and in the United States even if such care is clearly unwanted by the patient. Care can be terminated permitting the patient to die but patients can never be overtly euthanized. Death by starvation or suffocation deaths brought on by withholding treatment are necessarily slower and more painful in the event that any sensations exist than would be death brought on by outright killing. But Western morality and law covering medical practice do not permit killing patients under any condition. These cases highlight an ongoing dilemma in Western societies When is it permissible to allow an innocent human being to die and when if ever is it permissible to actively end the life of a patient to kill an innocent human being But this intriguing dilemma is not the focus of the present work which asks a question that is less often raised but which also cries out when examining these six cases How is it morally acceptable to go to such measures to maintain innocent human life while killing healthy adults in the full bloom of their lives simply because they are from another species On what morally relevant grounds do United States surgeons annually transplant about sixty thousand pig heart valves into humans destroying the lives of every last one of these sixty thousand hogs in the hope of saving humans beings Medical What line of reasoning might protect bodies such as that of Baby Theresa or Anthony Bland that are neither viable nor conscious while annually killing six million anymals for educational purposes How can medical personnel be required to sustain the painful and unnatural life of Matthew Donnelly
