eli5: Patients in hospice care are often unconscious due to high doses of sedative drugs, and are given no intravenous fluids, which leads to death by dehydration. Why is this done? Is there any difference between this and physician-assisted suicide?

Question

eli5: Patients in hospice care are often unconscious due to high doses of sedative drugs, and are given no intravenous fluids, which leads to death by dehydration. Why is this done? Is there any difference between this and physician-assisted suicide?

In: Other

Answer 1

There is a difference between allowing death and causing death. 

If there was no option to allow death, we could keep many people alive indefinitely, way past the point of reason, simply because we have the technology. 

Broadly, most would argue, we currently lean too far towards prolonging life instead of allowing natural death.