Daniel Callahan PhD - Euthanasia

Name:	Daniel Callahan, PhD
Title:	Director of International Programs at the Hastings Center
Position:	Con to the question "Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal?"
Reasoning:	"This path to peaceful dying rests on the illusion that a society can safely put in the hands of physicians the power directly and deliberately to take life, euthanasia, or to assist patients in taking their own life, physician-assisted suicide... It threatens to add still another sad chapter to an already sorry human history of giving one person the liberty to take the life of another. It perpetuates and pushes to an extreme the very ideology of control--the goal of mastering life and death--that created the problems of modern medicine in the first place. Instead of changing the medicine that generates the problem of an intolerable death (which, in almost all cases, good palliative medicine could do), allowing physicians to kill or provide the means to take one's own life simply treats the symptoms, all the while reinforcing, and driving us more deeply into, an ideology of control." The Case Against Assisted Suicide: For the Right to End-of-Life Care, 2004
Theoretical Expertise Ranking:	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:	Director, International Programs, The Hastings Center, 1997-Present Fellow, Institution for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, 2004-Present Senior Research Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Yale University, 2004-Present Senior Lecturer, Harvard Medical School, 1998-Present Doctor of Humane Letters (Honorary), Oregon State University, 1997 Visiting Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, 1996 President and Co-Founder, The Hastings Center, 1969-1996 Executive Committee, Association for Practical and Professional Ethics, 1990-1996 Honorary Professor, Charles University Medical School, Prague, Czech Republic, 1996 Advisory Committee on Scientific Integrity, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991-1992 Consultant, Council for International Organizations of Medical Sciences, 1992-1998 Advisory Editor, Ethics in Science and Medicine, 1975-Present Editorial Advisory Board, Advanced Studies in Professional Ethics, 1986-Present Advisory Board, Medical Humanities Review, 1986-Present Board of Editors, Journal of Medicine, Ethics and Law, 1987-Present
Education:	PhD, Philosophy, Harvard University, 1965 MA, Philosophy, Georgetown University, 1957 BA, English and Psychology, Yale University, 1952
Contact Info:	Phone: 914-424-4040 Fax: 845-424-4545 E-Mail: callahand@thehastingscenter.org Website: Hastings Center Page
Select Publications:	Terminal Sedation: Euthanasia in Disguise?, 2004 What Price Better Health? Hazards of the Research Imperative, 2003 "Age, Rationing, and Palliative Care," Geriatric Palliative Care, 2003 "Living and Dying with Medical Technology," Critical Care Medicine, 2003 "Reason, Self-Determination, and Physician-Assisted Suicide," The Case Against Physician-Assisted Suicides, 2002 The Troubled Dream of Life: In Search of a Peaceful Death, 2000
Other:	None found
Also Quoted in:	1. Should euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide be legal? 2. Should healthcare resources be subject to rationing? 3. Is there a moral difference between passive and active euthanasia?