Med Ethics Paper Para 2

The author’s central argument is that there are occasions where killing someone is better than letting someone die. She uses Nesbitt’s ‘Smith and Jones’ scenario to prove that Nesbitt’s ‘difference thesis’ (states that killing someone is morally worse than letting someone die) is false. Kuhse goes on to say that killing someone is not necessarily an evil thing nor harming the patient when it comes to the field of medicine. Life isn’t always good and can be filled with suffering. It is when the patient is suffering that killing the patient is better than letting the patient die. If the doctor were to leave the patient to die on his own, that would not be beneficial to the patient and would be seen as incapacitated. We would not want those kinds of doctors nor people around us because they act like rocks or trees and do not feel compassion. Kuhse then provides his own examples of when killing is better than letting die.