Legistrothanatry: a new specialty for assisting in death.

Abstract

����� The debate on physician-assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia is still active and unresolved. Clear resolution in the near future seems unlikely, because moral visions of the acceptable and unacceptable are diverse, and arguments on practical grounds are supported by little data. Suicide itself is viewed by some as morally unacceptable, but most of that opinion is religiously based. Because we are a secular, pluralistic society, suicide should be viewed, if not as morally acceptable, at least as lying within an individual's moral purview and not subject to legal prohibition [I]. If suicide should not be subject to legal prohibition on moral grounds, then it seems difficult tojustify on moral grounds, prima facie, prohibiting assisted suicide or its close cousin, voluntary euthanasia. There is afundamental difference, however, between suicide and assisted suicide: the former is ultimately chosen and executed by one person with a single set ofvalues; the latter draws in a second person with a second set ofvalues. While the second person may be concerned only with the interests of the suicide subject, there is potential that he may act in his own interest, based on his own values, in encouraging and assisting suicide [2] . Thus, there is an important empirical question that looms larger under conditions of assisting suicide than suicide: to what extent and with what frequency is the act ofsuicide motivated by the best interests ofthe subject? Self-serving motivation by the assister may be an attendant risk ofa permissive social attitude toward assisted suicide; debate on the subject has provided no clear answers because few unequivocal data are available. Objective evidence that the interests of second or third parties will frequently motivate assisters to encourage suicide would argue stronglyfor legal prohibition of assisted suicide; whereas evidence tiiat this will seldom occur