ABSTRACT
According to James Rachels and Michael Tooley, the AMA maintains the doctrine that there is an important moral difference between active and passive euthanasia. Both men argue that this distinction is based on a distinction between killing and letting die, and that as the latter distinction is without moral significance, the former is as well. Thus, Rachels suggests that the AMA policy statement that endorses this doctrine is unsound. I show that the AMA statement does not in fact maintain the doctrine attributed to it. Rachels and Tooley mistakenly believe that the AMA permits passive euthanasia because they wrongly identify the cessation of life-prolonging treatment with passive euthanasia and the intentional termination of life. I then give two sorts of case in which the cessation of life-prolonging treatment cannot be seen as tantamount to the intentional termination of life. Once this is understood, the AMA policy statement is seen not to be confused or contradictory.
