Physician Assisted Suicide : Expanding The Debate - 98 edition

Summary: In its two recent cases about the hotly debated issue of physician assisted suicide, the United States Supreme Court concluded its majority opinion with the declaration that, "Americans are engaged in an earnest and profound debate about the morality, legality, and practicality of physician-assisted suicide. . . . Our holding permits this debate to continue, as it should in a democratic society." A consequence of the Supreme Court's decision is to return di ...show morescussion to the states, to deal with this heated issue either legislatively or by citizen referendum. Physician Assisted Suicide: Expanding the Debate is a cross-disciplinary collection of essays that advances such reflection and discussion during the politically turbulent period to come.

The question of physician assisted suicide is not a simple matter. By offering views from a range of disciplines, including bioethics, law, medicine, and religion this book draws attention to the variety of questions to be addressed, for example:

• Should assistance in suicide be confined to the terminally ill--or should any rational person be able to ask for a doctor's help in ending life?
• Is physician-assisted suicide about avoiding suffering, or is it about control of the decision to end one's life?
• Would doctors' killing patients betray their public trust, or would providing aid-in-dying allow patients greater security in knowing their doctors would help them as they wish at the end?
• Is controlling one's own dying analogous to controlling one's fertility, a matter of particular importance to feminists?
• Are people with disabilities especially susceptible to coercion--or is portraying them as weak and vulnerable another form of stereotyping?
• What about Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish views of physician-assisted suicide?
• What about rights and duties, both of physicians and patients?

Edition/Copyright: 98
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: Routledge N. Y.
Published: 08/05/1998

View Review

"...this book offers one of the most comprehensive tools to date for understanding the physician-assisted suicide debate.."

-- Janet Heald Forliani, Religious Studies Review

"This excellent collection succeeds in expanding the debate about legalizing physician-assisted suicide well beyond its current narrow framework."

-- New England Journal of Medicine

"From protecting the weak to the question of saving health-care money through PAS, the book covers many often contentious subjects."

-- Publishers Weekly

"Physician Assisted Suicide is by far the most comprehensive collection of materials yet....Whether you know little about this issue, or thought that you knew everything there is to know on it, you are bound to learn more from reading this volume."

-- Peter Singer, author of Rethinking Life and Death

"In a field where a debate can easily degenerate into sound-bites, it is refreshing to find a collection of essays that examines the difficult issues in a thoughtful and balanced fashion. Everyone concerned with the personal, psychological, medical, social, religious, and legal dimensions of physician-assisted suicide needs this volume."

-- Alexander M. Capron, Professor of Law and Medicine, University of Southern California Law School

Routledge Web Site, May, 2000