Assisted Suicide,Euthanasia, and Suicide Prevention: The Implications of the Dutch Experience

What impact would legalization of assisted suicide and euthanasia have on our ability to treat suicidal patients and to prevent suicide? Information from a study of the Dutch experience illustrates how legal sanction promotes a culture that transforms suicide into assisted suicide and euthanasia and encourages patients and doctors to see choosing death as a preferred way of dealing with serious or terminal illness. The extension of the right to euthanasia to those who are not physically ill further complicates the problem. So too does the tendency of doctors in such a culture to begin to feel that they can make decisions about ending the life of competent terminally ill patients without consulting the patient. “Normalizing” suicide as a medical option lays the groundwork for a society that turns euthanasia into a “cure” for suicidal depression.     

The Opinions of GP's Patients About Suicide,Assisted Suicide,Euthanasia, and Suicide Prevention: An Italian Survey

A survey about opinions on end‐of‐life issues of a population represented by 1,171 people in the waiting room of general practitioners' surgeries was conducted in a province of northern Italy. Most subjects did not consider suicide as a reasonable option even in cases of a serious and incurable disease. Moreover, subjects did not consider euthanasia as a possible option either; however, they did express an opposite attitude when considering euthanasia in a third‐person perspective. People with a personal history of suicidal behavior appear to present as a different population, overall expressing more open attitudes.     

Progressive Dying: Meaningful Acts of Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

In this paper I use William James's understanding of “significance” in life to show that for certain patients euthanasia and assisted suicide can be importantly meaningful acts that family, friends, and health care professionals must acknowledge and even, at times, aid in bringing to fruition. Dying with meaning is transformative. It reshapes the lives of others that are left behind, giving to their lives new groundings by engaging them in the meaning of dying for us. For the patient, dying with meaning takes the seemingly formless void in the abyss of death and gives it a significant purpose in the last stages of life itself; it turns potential nothingness into actual significance. To the extent that we outsiders do not help the dying, we condemn terminally ill patients to a meaningless existence until they die.     

Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide from Confucian Moral Perspectives

This essay first discusses the three major arguments in favor of euthanasia and physician-assisted-suicide in contemporary Western society, viz., the arguments of mercy, preventing indignity, and individual autonomy. It then articulates both Confucian consonance and dissonance to them. The first two arguments make use of Confucian discussions on suicide whereas the last argument appeals to Confucian social-political thought. It concludes that from the Confucian moral perspectives, none of the three arguments is fully convincing.     

Acceptance of Conditional Suicide and Euthanasia among Adult Americans

ABSTRACT: Analysis of the attitudes of a 1977 cross-sectional sample of 1,530 American adults concerning euthanasia and suicide indicates that sex, age, and education are significant variables. Males, those who are younger and those who are better educated, are more likely to approve of euthanasia and suicide when a person has an incurable disease. Religious affiliation was not an important variable, although those who were frequent church-service attenders or who were high on religiosity were highly likely to reject euthanasia and suicide.     

论安乐死如何可能——兼论作为风险的自杀问题

本文写作之时传来美国"死亡医师"科沃基恩(J.Kevorkian)的去世消息,他在巴赫的音乐声中平静离世。①目前对安乐死的讨论尽管激烈,但无论赞成与否,其在方法论上都只是一个经验上必然碰到的"二律背反"的问题,这就是幸福论与义务论伦理思想的对立在死亡问题上的表现,即:"(自我)杀死"与"(自我)牺牲"。本文的目的则是要在先验层面解决这个问题,并揭示自杀的风险性质。在蕴含式A→B(如果A,那么B)中,若只有当A为"真"而B为"假"时A→B才是     

Autonomy,Euthanasia and the Right to Die with Dignity: A Comparison of Kantian Ethics and Shicite Teachings

This article engages in a conceptual analysis and discussion of the definition of euthanasia, including a number of inherent distinctions, together with a concomitant examination of various value perspectives that are applied to the way the idea of ‘life’ itself is understood, especially the notion of autonomy. Among a number of considerations, the pro-life and pro-choice controversy and its relevance cannot be ignored in the context of a comprehensive discussion of the issue from a Shi^cite point of view. An attempt is made to show that euthanasia is a sophisticated normative subject with different aspects and categories. An outright normative refutation of the act by many Muslim writers and jurists seems to be a kind of oversimplification of this multi-faceted issue.