No Distinction between MAID and Withdrawing Life-sustaining Treatment

Withdrawing life-sustaining treatment is almost universally accepted within the medical community as morally permissible. This recent article posits that "if MAID and WLT are effectively equivalent practices, then MAID must be considered permissible as well, on pain of inconsistency. The judgment that MAID is morally impermissible requires a meaningful difference between it and WLT."  

After surveying clinicians who participate in WLT or MAID (or both), the authors found that "most participants ultimately did not perceive a moral difference between the two practices." One participant explained:

"Morally or ethically, taking someone off a ventilator with the certainty that they are going to die is absolutely no different [than MAiD] to me. Both are actions where there is a certainty that a person is going to be deceased… I’m not sure it matters what the mechanism is.”