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3.0 out of 5 stars
PROFESSIONALS WHO SUPPORT THE RIGHT-TO-DIE, August 13, 2010
This review is from: Physician-Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice (Paperback)
Timothy E. Quill, MD & Margaret P. Battin, PhD., editors.
Physician-Assisted Suicide:
The Case for Palliative Care and Patient Choice
(Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press: www.press.jhu.edu, 2004) 342 pages
(ISBN: 0-8018-8069-9; hardcover)
(ISBN: 0-8018-8070-X; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: R726.P485 2004)
(Medical call number: W50P5781 2004)
This book is a collection of articles written by various people
in support of the right-to-die generally
and more specifically in support of
life-ending drugs prescribed by a physician
as a means of voluntarily ending one's life under careful safeguards.
The Oregon Death with Dignity Act is the background model
for so-called "physician-assisted suicide".
Doctors should not abandon their patients as they near death.
Each patient needs special caring,
even when such services cannot be billed as medical care.
Patient autonomy should be respected.
The authors from the Netherlands defend their practice
of assisting dying under their current safeguards.
And they offer telling criticisms of the critics
who claim wide-spread abuse within the Dutch system.
These chapters contain some first-person accounts of doctors' feelings
as they help their patients to end their lives.
In the opinion of this reviewer,
the Dutch system spends too much time and energy
reviewing cases of voluntary death after the death has already been achieved.
If abuses and mistakes are to be avoided,
such reviews should take place before death.
Some chapters address political strategy for changing laws to permit the right-to-die.
Advocates of the right-to-die need to be aware of who the opposition is
and how they are likely to manipulate legislators and the public
in their attempts to prevent any changes in the laws of the various states.
From this reviewer's perspective, this book seems to have been put together
in a hurry by people who are very busy with other things.
The usual authors were asked to contribute.
And they form a united front in favor of life-ending drugs
as the only means of voluntary death.
We might even say that these authors
are the establishment of the right-to-die movement.
They have not taken great care to consider the impact of their code words
on readers from the general public who do not deal with right-to-die issues every day.
The outstanding example of this oversight is embodied in the title
and several of the articles: "physician-assisted suicide".
We are not really recommending
that people commit irrational suicide with the help of a doctor.
Was the expression "physician-assisted suicide" invented by the opposition?
(Instead of "suicide", we should say "voluntary death".
The present reviewer has created a cyber-sermon on this theme:
Search the Internet for these exact words:
"Four Differences between Irrational Suicide & Voluntary Death".)
The authors of the articles collected here represent various professional perspectives
rather than the thoughts and feelings of people facing their own deaths.
But it is nevertheless useful to know what doctors and lawyers
think about the process of choosing wise pathways towards death.
No authors share their own plans for achieving an ideal death.
In general this is a good book,
but unfortunately it does not break any new ground.
Nevertheless this book will stand as a broad-based representation
of the state of right-to-die thinking at the beginning of the 21st century.
What will such books say 50 or 100 years from now?
If you would like to read better books on the same themes,
search the Internet for: "Books on the Right-to-Die".
James Leonard Park, advocate of the right-to-die with careful safeguards.
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