Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Sheldon Rubenfeld is clinical professor of medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Daniel P. Sulmasy is André Hellegers professor of biomedical ethics in the departments of medicine and philosophy and acting director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University.

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Sheldon Rubenfeld

Part I: The History of Physician-Assisted Suicide, Euthanasia and the Third Reich, and Their Current State of Affairs in Europe

1. On a Slippery Slope: The Historical Debate on Euthanasia in Germany

Gerrit Hohendorf

2. International and German Eugenics from ca. 1880 up to Post-World War II Period: Medical Expertise—Political Ambition—Relations to Euthanasia in the Nazi Context

Volker Roelcke

3. Euthanasia in Nazi Germany: Children’s Euthanasia Program, Aktion T4, and Decentralized Killing

Gerrit Hohendorf

4. Ethics and Ideology for Future Doctors: How Nazi Values Were Taught in the German Medical Curriculum 1939–1945

Florian Bruns

5. A Protagonist’s View of Euthanasia in the Netherlands Today

Eduard (A.A.E.) Verhagen

6. The Case Against Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Stephan Sahm

7. Palliative Medicine and the Debate on Physician-Assisted Death in Germany

H. Christof Müller-Busch

Part II. Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia After the Third Reich

8. Helping the Few: Historical Perspectives on Aid-In-Dying

Barron Lerner

9. Palliative Care, Hospice, and Last-Resort Options

Timothy E. Quill

10. Race and Physician-Assisted Death: Do Black Lives Matter?

Alan Elbaum and LaVera Crawley

11. Understanding the Role of Suffering in Legalized Physician-Assisted Dying

Robert A. Pearlman

12. Physician Countertransference and Patient Requests for a Hastened Death

Diane E. Meier

13. The Value of Life vs. the Principle of Autonomy

Avraham Steinberg

14. The Distinction Between Voluntary and Involuntary Euthanasia and the Critical Role of Eugenics

James Downar

15. Euthanasia Old and New: Lives Not Worth Living and Unequal Respect for Autonomy

Scott Y. H. Kim

16. Can a Person Ever Be “Not Useful”? A Critical Analysis of the Anthropological Roots of Euthanasia Under National Socialism and Today

Ashley K. Fernandes

17. The Best Physicians Are Destined for Hell

Kenneth Prager

18. Pediatric Euthanasia: A Call for Civil Disobedience

Eric Kodish

19. “The Syringe Belongs in the Hand of a Physician”

Power, Authority, Control, Death, and the Patient-Physician Relationship

Daniel P. Sulmasy

About the Contributors

Index