Ending Life: Ethics and the Way We Die

by Margaret P. Battin

Margaret Pabst Battin has established a reputation as one of the top philosophers working in bioethics today. This work is a sequel to Battin's 1994 volume The Least Worst Death . The last ten years have seen fast-moving developments in end-of-life issues, from the legalization of physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and the Netherlands, to a furor over proposed restrictions of scheduled drugs used for causing death, and the development of "NuTech" methods of assistance in dying. Battin's new collection covers a remarkably wide range of end-of-life topics, including suicide prevention, AIDS, suicide bombing, serpent-handling and other religious practices that pose a risk of death, genetic prognostication, suicide in old age, global justice and the "duty to die." It also examines suicide, physician-assisted suicide, and euthanasia in both American and international contexts.

As with the earlier volume, these new essays are theoretically adroit but draw richly from historical sources, fictional techniques, and ample factual material.

Genres: Nonfiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published March 31, 2005

About the author

Margaret Pabst Battin

Reviews

[Craig Dove · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of essays, some better than others. Interesting overall, but I probably would have been just as happy reading the two or three essays that most interested me and leaving the rest.