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Stuart_Armstrong comments on Weak repugnant conclusion need not be so repugnant given fixed resources - Less Wrong Discussion
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It would need to be consequentialist, of course.
If we've defined welfare/happiness/personal utility, we could define 'end of life' as "no longer generating any welfare, positive or negative, in any possible future". Or something to that effect, which should be good enough for our purposes.
But then, is not any method which does not prolong a life equivalent to ending it? This then makes basically any plan unethical. If unethical is just a utility cost, like you imply elsewhere, then there's still the possibility that it's ethical to kill someone to make others happier (or to replace them with multiple people), and it's not clear where that extra utility enters the utility function from. If it's the prohibition of plans entirely, then the least unacceptable plan is the one that sacrifices everything possible to extend lives as long as possible- which seems like a repugnant conclusion of its own.
Yes - but the distinction between doing something through action or inaction seems a very feeble one in the first place.
Generally, you don't want to make any restriction total/deontological ("It's never good to do this"), or else it dominates everything else in your morality. You'd want to be able to kill someone for a large enough gain - just not to be able to do continually for slight increases in total (or average) happinesses. Killing people who don't want to die should carry a cost.