Euthanasia is defined as the act of intentionally killing someone to relieve pain and suffering. If euthanasia is to benefit someone's life then I believe that there should be no distinction between active and passive euthanasia. Since both active and passive euthanasia consequently terminates an individual's life, is it not better to relieve the patients suffering as soon as possible, even if this means to kill rather than letting the individual die due to disease. I am in full support of Helga Kuhse's (1998, p. 373) belief 'Killing is not always worse than letting die. Sometimes it is morally better' as Winston Nesbitt's (1995) difference thesis, which claim that killing an individual is always worse than allowing someone to die, is flawed as Nesbitt assumes that death is always an evil. .
In most cases of everyday life, death is viewed as an evil as us individuals have something to live for such as experiences and the future in which death would just be taking away from us. But when death is imminent and a prolonged life means more misery and suffering, where it becomes an 'intolerable burden' (Kuhse 1998, p. 373), then death, in this instance, cannot be considered more evil than living. This can be proven in Kuhse's famous truck driver example where a truck driver and his co-driver have an accident in which the driver becomes trapped in the wreckage and starts to burn. The driver begs his co-driver who is an experienced shooter to shoot him. The co-driver shoots the driver. In this instance, the driver was going to be killed by being burnt alive. The driver asked to be shot to death instead as his no longer sees death as his greatest evil, even welcoming an earlier death rather than to suffer the pain of living. Therefore the driver saw living as an 'intolerable burden' and being out of options, in this case he saw death as something 'good' rather than it being evil.
