Abstract
Most objections to euthanasia are based on the moral principle that killing an innocent person is wrong. This principle also applies to cases wherein people ask (for help) to die in order to avoid unbearable, intractable, and incurable pain. It has been suggested that such patients could be offered an alternative in which they are cryosuspended immediately after their (legal) death has been medically induced. Such “cryothanasia” would allow them to be stored indefinitely with a non-negligible chance of being revived in a more medically advanced future. Since cryonics ultimately seeks to preserve and extend lifespan, these cryothanasia patients would, in effect, be choosing to die in order to (hopefully) live longer in the future. This chapter argues that classical objections to euthanasia, based on the principle that it is always morally wrong to kill an innocent person, cannot be used to oppose cryothanasia.
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Notes
- 1.
For an overview of the main ethical issues raised by euthanasia in the medical context, see Keown (1997).
- 2.
It should be noted that some religious people nevertheless consider suffering as a positive thing in certain contexts; see Paul (1984).
- 3.
Orr, Pang, Pellegrino, and Siegler (1997) notes that only 14% of official medical oaths specifically prohibited euthanasia as of 1993.
- 4.
For a philosophical discussion of status quo bias, see, for example, Bostrom and Ord (2006).
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Minerva, F. (2018). Cryothanasia. In: The Ethics of Cryonics. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78599-8_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78599-8_5
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