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...

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1. VerfasserIn: Della Croce, Yoann (VerfasserIn)
Medienart: Elektronisch Aufsatz
Sprache:Englisch
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Veröffentlicht: Wiley-Blackwell 2023
In: Bioethics
Jahr: 2023, Band: 37, Heft: 7, Seiten: 617-623
IxTheo Notationen:NCH Medizinische Ethik
NCJ Wissenschaftsethik
weitere Schlagwörter:B Assisted Suicide
B Markets
B Equality
B Autonomy
B Commodification
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Zusammenfassung: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.
ISSN:1467-8519
Enthält:Enthalten in: Bioethics
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/bioe.13173