num_pages: 150
description: Is death a personal or a social act? Do human beings have the right to choose their own ways of dying, to make the fateful choice between life and death for others? In this book readers are invited to join eight specialists in medicine, law, sociology, and ethics who are debating these question between suicide and euthanasia.These essays here address a wide variety of issues related to suicide and euthanasia. Euthanasia as an alternative to intense suffering in physical or mental illness is labeled "murder," but is it? Is suicide a crime against the human race? "Social suicide" -- not a destruction of the biological self but a feigned death to provide an escape to a new identity is rationally calculated; is it morally wrong? Other essays discuss the reasons some prisoners and cancer patients elect death, the ethical justifications for suicide, the legal protections of life, the social dimensions of death, and the legal structure of living wills.Taken collectively, these essays apply a variety of perspectives on heretofore unexplored areas of thanatology. Embracing ideas from the behavioral sciences, history, philosophy, theology, and medicine, Suicide and Euthanasia will be a useful resource for professionals, researchers, teachers, and lay readers.
language: English
title: Suicide and Euthanasia: The Rights of Personhood
titlecomplete: Suicide and Euthanasia: The Rights of Personhood
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Univeristy of Tennessee Press