Easeful Death: Is There a Case for Assisted Dying?

Issues in Law & Medicine, Summer, 2008

Warnock, Mary & Elisabeth Macdonald. Easeful Death: Is There a Case for Assisted Dying? New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 2008; 800-451-7556.

In the British Parliament there were three attempts in 2003, 2004, and 2005, to legalize assisted death for those who request it and who are terminally ill. These attempts came through private members' bills, introduced into the House of Lords by Lord Joffe, an experienced and respected human rights lawyer. None of these Bills succeeded.

The question addressed is this: Is it morally justifiable in some circumstances for a doctor or another person to end someone's life or help her to end it? And, if there is, is there a way of changing the law so as to provide a bright line rule that distinguishes euthanasia and assisted suicide from those actions prohibited in the criminal law. As law in the United Kingdom now stands, intentionally killing another person is murder and assisting someone to commit suicide is a criminal offence. Chapter titles include Fundamental Principles: The Nature of the Dispute; Types of Euthanasia; Psychiatric Assisted Suicide; Neonates; Incompetent Adults; Human Life is Sacred; The Slippery Slope; Medical Views; Four Methods of Easing Death and their Effect on Doctors; and Looking Further Ahead.

Mary Warnock is a philosopher, an Independent Life Peer in the House of Lords, a writer and broadcaster; Elisabeth Macdonald is a cancer specialist at Guy's and St. Thomas' Teaching Hospitals in London and teacher of medical ethics.