Doctors' judgement isn't perfect

The argument

This argument opposes euthanasia on the ground of diagnostic fallibility combined with irreversibility, and it is the combination that does the work. The first element is that doctors and physicians are fallible. This is not a charge of negligence but a description of medical practice: a prognosis is a judgement made under uncertainty, drawing on incomplete information about a particular body, and it can be wrong without anyone having erred. The evidence cited is the existence of many examples of seemingly hopeless cases which ended in the patient's recovery. Such cases establish that the category of the hopeless is not reliably identified — that some people placed in it by competent clinicians nevertheless get better. The second element is the finality of active euthanasia. Most medical errors leave room for correction: a mistaken prognosis can be revised as the illness develops, and treatment can be changed. Euthanasia closes that possibility, because the patient does not survive to demonstrate that the diagnosis was faulty or incomplete. Any error becomes permanent at the moment it is acted upon. Put together, the two yield a conclusion the argument treats as unavoidable rather than merely possible: it is inevitable that some patients who could have been cured will die, because fallible judgements will be made and the finality of the procedure guarantees that a share of them cannot be caught. The scale may be small, but the occurrence is certain. That certainty is what makes the risk unacceptable in light of the Hippocratic oath, which binds physicians against doing harm, and of the sanctity of life. Because doctors' judgement isn't perfect and the consequences of error cannot be undone, euthanasia should be illegal.

Context

Opponents of voluntary, active euthanasia often are worried that its legalization gives too much power and responsibility to physicians treating patients. Since a patient would make a decision based on a diagnosis made by their physician, the risk of faulty diagnosis must be taken into account.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The possibility of such situations does not imply that the practice of euthanasia is as a whole unethical or unjustified. In cases where multiple doctors have agreed beyond a reasonable doubt that the illness is terminal, a very unlikely possibility of an error is not enough to deny the option of voluntary active euthanasia.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] The very unlikely scenario of a sudden recovery cannot be the justification for withholding a euthanasia for those patients who suffer gravely and will die from their illness.