The Right to Die with Dignity: An Argument in Ethics, Medicine, and Law

Issues in Law & Medicine, Spring, 2002

Cohen-Almagor, Raphael. The Right to Die with Dignity: An Argument in Ethics, Medicine, and Law. Piscataway, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2001.

The author attempts a balanced approach to the fight to die debate, viewing the dispute from public policy and international perspectives. He offers an interdisciplinary approach, including medicine, law, religion, and ethics. With a comprehensive look at the troubling question of whether physician-assisted suicide should be allowed, he delineates a distinction between active and passive euthanasia and discusses legal measures that have been invoked in the United States and abroad. He outlines reasons non-blood relatives should be given a role in deciding a patient's last wishes. As he examines euthanasia policies in the Netherlands and the 1994 Oregon Death with Dignity Act, the author suggests amendments and finally makes a circumscribed plea for voluntary physician-assisted suicide: "Our first obligation is to place the issue in its proper context and to emphasize that most patients seek to preserve life. With this proviso in mind, I support the fight to die with dignity in certain cases. I will to my best to describe these cases clearly, without being overzealous, and without offending the people involved. Life should not be seen as a virtue to be preserved at any cost, regardless of the patient's will; at the same time, euthanasia should not be supported without reservation," writes Cohen-Almagor, senior lecturer at the University of Haifa, Israel.