Citation

Amir Samavati P. Med. Ethics J. 2008; 2(4): 49-80.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Medical Ethics and Law Research Center, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Medical assisted suicide is a quarrelsome debate among lawyers, criminologists, protective movements advocating the disabled persons and the disabled themselves at the part of vulnerable population. In all these disputes, the centre of gravity is around the right of disabled person to death. Do the disabled themselves select such a right and apply it? Is it a mere right in itself? That is, can we see the manifestation of the disabled free will or undue social discrimination leaves no way for them except selecting death? In case of our accepting it, is it selection based on the disabled actual consent or is it a defective one and arise from social pressure and lack of necessarily lawful protections from this range of vulnerable persons? Is this the lack of the least degree of right for the disabled that lead them toward selections assisted suicide? Can we condemn the disabled in the circumstances in which their unavoidable fate is nothing but tolerating suffer raised from lethal and incurable disease and finally death? It seems that it was the time to regulate this fact legitimating assisted suicide and adopting legal safeguards in order to recognize the right to resorting assisted suicide although in exceptional circumstances and from the legal viewpoint and the meanwhile replacing the right to voluntary death by the right to select a respectable life. The author tries to deal with the above mentioned issues and discuss the challenges which we face in legitimating assisted suicide

Language: fa