Euthanasia and physicians’ moral duties

Opponents of euthanasia sometimes argue that it is incompatible with the purpose of medicine, since physicians have an uncondi-tional duty never to intentionally cause death. But it is not clear how such a duty could ever actually be unconditional, if due con-sideration is given to the moral weight of countervailing duties equally fundamental to medicine. Whether physicians ’ moral duties are understood as correlative with patients ’ moral rights or construed noncorrelatively, a doctor’s obligation to abstain from intentional killing cannot be more than a defeasible duty