Patrick D. Hopkins

About the author: Patrick D. Hopkins is an assistant professor of philosophy at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin. He specializes in bioethics, social philosophy, and science and technology studies. He edited Sex/Machine: A Reader in Gender, Culture and Technology.

Many argue that an ethical distinction exists between the act of passive euthanasia (letting a patient die by withdrawing treatment) and active euthanasia (the act of killing a patient). However, the crux of their arguments usually rests on an irrelevant distinction between artificial and biological means of sustaining life. An artificial respirator and a human lung perform the same function of keeping a person alive. If a doctor removed a patient's lungs, causing the patient's death, that doctor would be killing. Similarly, if a doctor removed a...