Title: Fatal freedom : the ethics and politics of suicide /
Authors: Szasz, Thomas, 1920-2012
Publisher: Praeger,
Year: 1999
Subjects: Suicide Moral and ethical aspects; Suicide; Ethics
Abstract: "One of the most troubling issues we face today is who should control when and how we die. Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual's right to choose a voluntary death. Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist, believes that we can speak about suicide calmly and rationally, as he does in this book, and that we can ultimately accept suicide as part of the human condition. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric/medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane. His work asks and clearly, intelligently answers some of the most significant ethical questions of our time: Is suicide a voluntary act or an act of mental illness? Should physicians be permitted to prevent it? Should they be authorized to abet it?"--BOOK JACKET.
Contents: Speaking of suicide: Our self-mutilated vocabulary -- Constructing suicide: what counts as killing oneself? -- Excusing suicide: the fateful evasion -- "Preventing" suicide: "saving" lives -- Prescribing suicide: death as treatment -- Perverting suicide: killing as treatment -- Rethinking suicide: death control, the final responsibility.