Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
Position:
Con to the question "Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal?"
Reasoning:
"I continue to find great and needless risks in moving toward legalizing euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. I also remain convinced that such measures will not deal in any way adequately with the needs of most persons at the end of life, least of all in societies without adequate health care insurance available to all. No society has yet worked out the hardest questions of how to help those patients who desire to die, without endangering others who do not. There is a long way to go before we arrive at a social resolution of those questions that does not do damage to our institutions."
"Physician-Assisted Suicide," Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide: For and Against, 1998
Experts
MDs, JDs (Lawyers), PhDs and Religious Leaders with significant involvement in end-of-life issues. [Because end-of-life dilemmas require medical, ethical, legal, and in some case religious considerations, we view MDs, PhDs with a bio-ethical focus, and JDs/religious leaders with significant involvement as "experts" in the euthanasia debate.] [Note: Experts definition varies by site.]
Involvement and Affiliations:
Member, Editorial Advisory Board, Encyclopedia of Public Health, 2001
Member, Editorial Board, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 1999
Member, Committee for International Cooperation, American Philosophical Association, 1998-2001
Corresponding Editor, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 1998
Fellow, spring term, Joan Shorenstein Barone, Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University, 1993
Member, Editorial Advisory Board, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 1992-1994
Member Advisory Council, The Institute for Global Ethics, 1991
Member, Advisory Board, Contention: A Journal of Debates in Society, Culture, and Science, 1990-1996
Member, Executive Committee, Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, 1990-1999
Member, Advisory Board, Institute for Philosophy and Religion, Boston University, 1986
Member, Board of Consulting Editors, Encyclopedia of Ethics, 1986-1991
Member, Committee on Philosophy and Medicine, American Philosophical Association, 1986-1989
Member, Ethics Advisory Board, U.S. Department of Health,Education, and Welfare, 1977-1980
Member, Advisory Board, Encyclopedia of Bioethics, 1974-1978
Fellow, Interfaculty Program in Medical Ethics, Harvard University, 1972-1973
Education:
PhD, Philosophy, Harvard University, 1970
MA, Clinical Psychology, George Washington University, 1958
BA, George Washington University, 1957
Sorbonne, Université de Paris, 1954-1955
Contact Info:
Phone: 617-495-3012 Fax: None found E-Mail:
None found Website: Faculty Page
Select Publications:
Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 1999
Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide, with Gerald Dworkin and Ray Frey, 1998
"Easeful Death: From Keats to Kevorkian," Harvard Medical School Alumni Bull., 1997
Secrets: on the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation, 1989
"Personal Directions for Care at the End of Life," The New England Journal of Medicine, 1976
