Ricco asked:

My question is about euthanasia. Can it be justified? Is it moral or immoral? Or is it out of the question
of moral or immoral? Could you share your opinions with me?

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We are all going to die. I do not believe that there is any moral justification for the view that a person
should never be allowed to choose the time and the place. It follows that if the circumstances make it
impossible for a person to take their own life without assistance, then there will be cases where it is
morally permissible for such assistance to be offered. It does notfollow, however, that euthanasia is
always justified provided that the decision is freely taken.

We need to think very carefully about the consequences that would arise if euthanasia were legally
sanctioned. Would a healthy person be permitted to request euthanasia? Or would a committee of
doctors decide whether the quality of a person's life was sufficiently impaired to justify the request?
There will inevitably be cases where the request would not have been made, had the patient been
able to afford certain expensive drugs. The committee, in granting the request, would be saying in
effect, 'As you can't afford the treatment, we agree that you are better off dead.'

My intuitions tell me that the scenario I have just described is totally unacceptable. I cannot justify that
view with a philosophical argument, although I believe that the intuitions are widely shared. And there
will be many other such scenarios.

It is quite possible that, when all the problem cases are taken into consideration,we shall find that it is
impossible in practice to formulate a law permitting euthanasia that had adequate safeguards. The
paradoxical conclusion is that what is morally sometimes permissible ought never to be legally
permissible.

Geoffrey Klempner