Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of SuicideSyracuse University Press, 2002 M08 1 - 198 pages Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual’s right to choose F a voluntary death. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, Thomas Szasz believes that 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. Society’s penchant for defining behavior it terms objectionable as a disease has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influence over how and when we choose to die. In a compelling argument that clearly and intelligently addresses one of the most significant ethical issues of our time, Szasz compares suicide to other practices that historically began as sins, became crimes, and now arc seen as mental illnesses. |
Contents
Speaking of Suicide Our SelfMutilated Vocabulary | 1 |
Constructing Suicide What Counts as Killing Oneself? | 9 |
Excusing Suicide The Fateful Evasion | 29 |
Preventing Suicide Saving Lives | 45 |
Prescribing Suicide Death as Treatment | 63 |
Perverting Suicide Killing as Treatment | 89 |
Rethinking Suicide Death Control the Final Responsibility | 107 |
Appendix | 133 |
Notes | 139 |
Selected Bibliography | 157 |
| 169 | |
| 173 | |
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Common terms and phrases
abortion American anorexia nervosa Assisted Suicide authority autonomy behavior believe birth control Black's Law Dictionary cause cide clinical clinical depression coercion commit suicide Court CPSP crime criminal law death control declared defined depression dialysis disease doctors Dutch dying patients emphasis added Ethics excuse Gaylin hemodialysis heterohomicide human Ibid illegal individuals insanity insanity defense Jack Kevorkian justify Kevorkian killing oneself lethal drug liberty live McNaghten means medi medical killing Medicine mental health mental hospital mental illness mental patients mercy killing mind moral murder nephrologists one's Osler person who kills physi physician-assisted suicide physicians political practice prescribed prescription prevent suicide prohibition protect psychiatrists punishment quoted Racial Hygiene reject responsibility right to suicide self-killing self-murder social society suicide prevention Syracuse Herald-Journal T. S. Szasz term terminally ill patients therapeutic Thomas Szasz tients tion treat treatment University Press voluntary death York