8 - Physician-Assisted Suicide
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2014
Summary
There are governments that have taken it upon themselves to determine the justice and opportuneness of voluntary deaths. In our own Marseilles in the past there was kept, at public expense, some poison prepared with hemlock for those who wanted to hasten their deaths, which they could use after having first had the reasons for their enterprise approved by the Six Hundred, their Senate; and it was not lawful to lay hands upon oneself otherwise than by leave of the authorities and for legitimate reasons. This law also existed elsewhere.
Montaigne, Essays (1588)Providing the means for suicide after judging the “justice and opportuneness of voluntary deaths” is far from unprecedented, as Montaigne's example shows. Since antiquity, doctors have at times told patients intent on ending their lives in what dosage poisons and various other preparations become lethal. Some have prescribed such preparations for these patients; others have simply left barbiturates or other medications at their bedside, specifying that they should be careful about not exceeding a certain dosage since this would bring about their death. Likewise, it is from doctors that commandos and spies going on missions have acquired poisons to carry along in case of capture by enemy forces.
While all such practices have a long history, the term “physician-assisted suicide” is a neologism, perhaps less than ten years old, employed in challenges to laws prohibiting doctors (as well as all others) from being direct accessories to suicide. By now, the term is more central to the U.S.
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- Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide , pp. 128 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998
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