Kass: "Is There a Right to Die?"

I. Background

"The welcome triumphs against disease have been purchased at the price of the medicalized dehumanization of the end of life: . . . once we lick cancer and stroke, we can all live long enough to get Alzheimer's disease. And if the insurance holds out, we can die in the intensive care unit, suitably intubated. Fear of the very medical power we engaged to do battle against death now leads us to demand that it give us poison." (42).

People are increasingly insisting that they have rights to what they want and need. (34)

II. What would a "right to die" amount to?

A. General account of a right:

". . . having a right means having a justified claim against others that they act in a fitting manner: either that they refrain from interfering or that they deliver what is justly owed" (35).

B. Content of a patient's "right to die" (36)

It would include a patient's right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment in order to hasten her death.

It might include a patient's right to attempt suicide.

It might include a patient's right to "the deadly assistance of others."

(Kass implies that proponents of a right to die do intend it to include these second and third components.)

III. Dangers of asserting a right to die (42).

"Vulnerable life will no longer be protected by the state." (?)

"No one with an expensive or troublesome infirmity will be safe from the pressure to have his right to die exercised."

The medical profession's "devotion to healing and refusal to kill--its ethical center--will be permanently destroyed, and with it, patient trust and physicianly self-restraint."

IV. Kass's position

He defends (sometimes) allowing patients to die, but opposes the deliberate killing of them. He rejects the notion that there is a defensible right to die. (42)

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Kass: "Is There a Right to Die?"

I. Background

People are increasingly insisting that they have rights to what they want and need. (34)

II. What would a "right to die" amount to?

A. General account of a right:

". . . having a right means having a justified claim against others that they act in a fitting manner: either that they refrain from interfering or that they deliver what is justly owed" (35).

B. Content of a patient's "right to die" (36)

It would include a patient's right to refuse life-sustaining medical treatment in order to hasten her death.

It might include a patient's right to attempt suicide.

It might include a patient's right to "the deadly assistance of others."

(Kass implies that proponents of a right to die do intend it to include these second and third components.)

III. Dangers of asserting a right to die (42).

"Vulnerable life will no longer be protected by the state." (?)

"No one with an expensive or troublesome infirmity will be safe from the pressure to have his right to die exercised."

The medical profession's "devotion to healing and refusal to kill--its ethical center--will be permanently destroyed, and with it, patient trust and physicianly self-restraint."

IV. Kass's position

He defends (sometimes) allowing patients to die, but opposes the deliberate killing of them. He rejects the notion that there is a defensible right to die. (42)