This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD
Boston, Mass

Arch Intern Med. 1995;155(12):1329.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In reply

Gert is correct that there is a distinction between refusals and requests that is relevant to the ethical debate about euthanasia. I may correctly be criticized for not having highlighted it in my discussion of definitions and for having overly stressed the importance of the physician's intention.¹ However, my point in stating the definitions was not to settle ethical arguments by clever definitions but to make sure we all use these terms in the same manner.

In considering the ethical arguments against euthanasia, I clearly acknowledge the ethical importance of the refusal-request distinction. In my article,¹ I state:

Prohibiting euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide does not prevent individuals... from committing suicide by any number of other mechanisms.... In this sense, the autonomy to kill oneself does not extend "to have someone else's assistance."... The philosopher Francis Kamm put it this way: "[T]he person who requests it does . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?