EUTHANASIA AND SUICIDE

QUESTION:

Medical advances have made it possible to prolong the lives of the terminally ill, sometimes well beyond the point where there is any hope for recovery. People have been kept alive by medical technology even though patients sometimes express a wish to die. This has become one of the more complex moral and legal questions of our time. What do you think is the correct view for Buddhist practitioners to take on this question?

SHIH-FU:

We need to distinguish two cases. The first one occurs when the patient's vital functions are gone. This person would have no sensation or feeling, and in effect is clinically brain-dead. This person can only be kept alive intravenously, possibly with life support-devices. It is not wrong to terminate life support for such a person, but there should be no active intervention, such as lethal injections, to hasten the end. We must still observe the precept against killing. Let nature take its course.