Keown-WMA EoL Presentation Vatican-Nov2017

11/23/17
1
Euthanasia and PAS:
The Common Law
PROFESSOR JOHN KEOWN DPHIL (OXON), PHD (CANTAB), DCL (OXON)
KENNEDY INSTITUTE OF ETHICS
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Outline
u ‘Euthanasia’: voluntary; non-voluntary;
involuntary; unrequested
u Physician-assisted suicide
u Intention
u Withholding/withdrawing life-preserving
treatment
u competent patients
u incompetent patients
u Challenges to the prohibition in England
u in Parliament
u in the courts
u Challenges to the prohibition in other common law jurisdictions
u in the US
u in Canada
u in Australia
u Conclusion
Some suggested reading
Neil M Gorsuch, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia (Princeton UP, 2006)
John Keown (ed), Euthanasia Examined (Cambridge UP, 1995)
Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy (Cambridge UP, 2002; 2nd ed 2018)
The Law and Ethics of Medicine (Oxford UP, 2012)
Debating Euthanasia (with Emily Jackson)(Hart,2012)
‘Debating Euthanasia: A Reply to Emily Jackson’ in Mark
Henaghan and Jesse Wall (eds), Law, Ethics and Medicine
(ThomsonReuters, 2016)