We invite you at CADI, on Friday, 18th February 2011 at 1800 to take part in a discussion concerning physician assisted suicide.

“When the physicians offer to patients the means of committing suicide, they can have more reasons than the death of the patients: they may intend to decrease the patients’ anxiety concerning the possibility of dying in an unbearable pain; they may want to offer more options to the patients and a feeling of controlling when and how they will die; they may want to prevent the premature interruption of the machines that keep the patients alive, interruption done by the patient itself because of fear that he/she won’t be able to have this control in the future.” Dan Brock.

There is a significant variation between the positions that people take concerning the assisted suicide. First, there are the ones that are pleading for the existence of an assisted suicide right, based on the person’s right of taking essential decisions for its own autonomy and dignity. On the other hand, there are the ones that consider that legalizing the assisted suicide will not prevent the abuses. The problem is furthermore complicated by a series of distinctions between “to kill” and “to let die”.

Program

18:00 Prezsentation by Raluca si Dragos Bigu

18:20 Discussions

Resources:

Dan W. Brock (1999). „A Critique of Three Objections to Physician-Assisted Suicide”. Ethics 109 (3), pp. 519-547.

How DIGNITAS Works: On what philosophical principles are the activities  of this organisation based?