Engagingly written by one of the foremost experts on issues involving death and dying, this book offers insight into the controversial and often difficult topics of withdrawing and withholding care, euthanasia, and suicide. An extensive introduction identifies the principal ethical issues, and the book explores such dilemmas as rationing health care for the elderly, whether there is a "duty to die", counseling in rational suicide, the risks of abuse with active euthanasia, religious views about suicide, whether suicide can be understood as a fundamental human right, and others. It also examines the differing practices of Holland and Germany in ending life. Exploring the dilemmas raised by contemporary medicine concerning the way we die, and collecting under one cover a myriad of crucial elements involving one of the most inflammatory issues of our time, The Least Worst Death presents a timely, international analysis for anyone interested in bioethics or medical and applied ethics.

An extensive introduction identifies the principal ethical issues, and the book explores such dilemmas as rationing health care for the elderly, whether there is a "duty to die," counseling in rational suicide, the risks of abuse with active euthanasia, religious views about suicide, whether suicide can be understood as a fundamental human right, and others. It also examines the differing practices of Holland and Germany in ending life.

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 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," and 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.

How the legalization of assisted dying is changing our lives. Over the past five years, medical aid-in-dying (also known as assisted suicide) has expanded rapidly in the United States and is now legally available to one in five Americans. This growing social and political movement heralds the possibility of a new era of choice in dying. Yet very little is publicly known about how medical aid-in-dying laws affect ordinary citizens once they are put into practice. Sociological studies of new health policies have repeatedly demonstrated that the realities often fall short of advocacy visions, raising questions about how much choice and control aid-in-dying actually affords. Scripting Death chronicles two years of ethnographic research documenting the implementation of Vermont’s 2013 Patient Choice and Control at End of Life Act. Author Mara Buchbinder weaves together stories collected from patients, caregivers, health care providers, activists, and legislators to illustrate how they navigate aid-in-dying as a new medical frontier in the aftermath of legalization. Scripting Death explains how medical aid-in-dying works, what motivates people to pursue it, and ultimately, why upholding the “right to die” is very different from ensuring access to this life-ending procedure. This unprecedented, in-depth account uses the case of assisted death as an entry point into ongoing cultural conversations about the changing landscape of death and dying in the United States.

For twelve years Robert Blecker, a criminal law professor, wandered freely inside Lorton Central Prison, armed only with cigarettes and a tape recorder. The Death of Punishment tests legal philosophy against the reality and wisdom of street criminals and their guards. Some killers' poignant circumstances should lead us to mercy; others show clearly why they should die. After thousands of hours over twenty-five years inside maximum security prisons and on death rows in seven states, the history and philosophy professor exposes the perversity of justice: Inside prison, ironically, it's nobody's job to punish. Thus the worst criminals often live the best lives. The Death of Punishment challenges the reader to refine deeply held beliefs on life and death as punishment that flare up with every news story of a heinous crime. It argues that society must redesign life and death in prison to make the punishment more nearly fit the crime. It closes with the final irony: If we make prison the punishment it should be, we may well abolish the very death penalty justice now requires.

In January 2002, the first detainees of the War on Terror disembarked in Guantánamo Bay, dazed, bewildered, and--more often than not--alarmingly thin. With little advance notice, the military's preparations for this group of predominantly unimportant ne'er-do-wells were hastily thrown together, but as Karen Greenberg shows, a number of capable and honorable Marine officers tried to create a humane and just detention center. Greenberg, a leading expert on the Bush Administration's policies on terrorism, tells the story of the first one hundred days of Guantánamo through a group of career officers who tried--and ultimately failed--to stymie the Pentagon's desire to implement harsh new policies and bypass the Geneva Conventions. The latter ultimately won out, replacing transparency with secrecy, military protocol with violations of basic operation procedures, and humane and legal detainee treatment with harsh interrogation methods and torture--patterns of power that would come to dominate the Bush administration's overall strategy.--From publisher description.