Against commercial-assisted suicide
The idea of commercial-assisted suicide lives a marginal existence in the bioethical literature, despite its significant presence in popular culture. The practice of commercial-assisted suicide (CAS) is defined as suicide assistance performed for a financial reward through a contractual agreement be...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2023
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| In: |
Bioethics
Year: 2023, Volume: 37, Issue: 7, Pages: 617-623 |
| IxTheo Classification: | NCH Medical ethics NCJ Ethics of science |
| Further subjects: | B
Assisted Suicide
B Markets B Equality B Autonomy B Commodification |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | The idea of commercial-assisted suicide lives a marginal existence in the bioethical literature, despite its significant presence in popular culture. The practice of commercial-assisted suicide (CAS) is defined as suicide assistance performed for a financial reward through a contractual agreement between a customer and a service-provider, who does not necessarily need to be a medical professional. While CAS does indeed offer some potential solutions regarding the moral controversies surrounding physician-assisted suicide (PAS), I defend the idea that adopting it as policy ultimately proves morally indefensible and practically inefficient. This is due to the fact that the commodification of a given good necessarily implies the creation of a market of said good; as such, what I propose in this paper is a moral and practical evaluation of a market of CAS. In order to do so, I first examine the arguments in favor of CAS as put forward by Roland Kipke, who argues that any liberal defense of PAS necessarily implies a defense of CAS. In the first section, I argue against this idea using the liberal values of autonomy and equality of opportunity. In the second section of the paper, I argue that a market of CAS would be gravely dysfunctional due to one particular characteristic of death, namely, that is not compensable ex post. I conclude by arguing that while the practice of CAS may not prove morally problematic, the inevitable market that it will create should it be legalized most certainly will. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-8519 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Bioethics
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13173 |