Dan W. Brock

About the author: Dan W. Brock is professor of philosophy and director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics in the School of Medicine at Brown University. He is the author of Life and Death: Philosophical Essays in Biomedical Ethics.

Physician-assisted suicide is morally justified when voluntarily chosen by a terminally ill patient whose life has become unendurable and whose judgment is not impaired by depression. Assisted suicide, when motivated by respect for the wishes of the patient, provides the terminally ill with a dignified, humane death.

There are two central and distinct moral issues about physician-assisted suicide.1 First, is physician-assisted suicide morally justified in any individual cases? Second, would it be ethically justified for public and legal policy to permit physician-assisted suicide? This chapter is concerned only with the first of these questions...