The euthanasia debate is not just another moral debate, one in a long of arguments in our pluralistic society. It is profoundly emblematic of important turning points in Western thought. The first is that of the conditions under which one person can kill another....The second point lies in the meaning and limits of self-determination....The turning point is to be found in the claim being made upon medicine: it be prepared to make its skills available to individuals to help them their private vision of the good life....I believe that, at each of three turning points, proponents of euthanasia push us in the wrong. Arguments in favor of euthanasia fall into four general, which I will take up in turn: (1) the moral claim of individual-determination and well-being; (2) the moral irrelevance of the difference killing and allowing to die; (3) the supposed paucity of evidence to likely harmful consequences of legalized euthanasia; and (4) the of euthanasia and medical practice.
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Daniel Callahan (1992) studied this question.