Abstract

A number of philosophers in recent times have employed arguments to show that there is no morally relevant difference between killing a patient and allowing that patient to die in those circumstances where the outcome is virtually identical and where death is preventable, at least for a significant time. From his perspective as both a philosopher and a clinician, Grant Gillett has rejected such general and abstract arguments in the light of the intuitions and moral perceptions available to clinicians and those who care for the terminally ill. I argue that his strategy fails, is massively question‐begging, and that his appeal to the notion of ‘moral particularism’, far from being an alternative to cogent philosophical argument, actually supports the very position he has attempted to discredit.