ABSTRACT
Consider a proposal on nursing-home patients recently devised by Robert Marsh, a Glendale physician who chairs his hospital's ethics committee. A pressing question in any discussion of ethics and aging is that of voluntary active euthanasia. Daniel Callahan generally views the problem of health care in economic terms. In profound writing on health, old age and death, the taking of religious positions can hardly be avoided; and particularly in Callahan's writing they are not far below the surface. A basic tenet of the theology advocated by Callahan is gratitude by the old for the life of fulfillment which they have lived, and a willingness to allow resources to be diverted to those who have not realized such fullness. A separate but related aspect of ecumenical hope, is Callahan's desire to see an advance beyond superficial pleasure-seeking among the aged population and a turn toward grappling with life's deeper meaning. Callahan, like most American moralists and clinicians, opposes active voluntary euthanasia.
