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Assisted suicide Death and dying Euthanasia Suicide

“Truth, Euphemism, and Physician-Assisted Suicide”

Here is a link to a good essay by Professor Thomas Cavanaugh. The essay was published in Public Discourse. Cavanaugh’s essay explores the great danger of the use of euphemisms in the assisted suicide debate. He concludes with these thoughts: “we should “not be afraid of words that speak the truth.” Rather, we should find “simple, honest, and direct language.” Only after having done so can we adequately debate the ethical, legal, and political wisdom of prohibiting or removing the prohibition of a physician’s prescribing a lethal drug at his patient’s request. Otherwise, we run the risk of drinking arsenic as if it were ale, while burying who knows what suffering under jargon unfit for animals capable of truthful speech.”

Richard Myers

Richard S. Myers, the Vice-President of UFL, is Professor of Law at Ave Maria School of Law, where he teaches Antitrust, Civil Procedure, Conflict of Laws, Constitutional Law, and Religious Freedom. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Kenyon College and earned his law degree at Notre Dame, where he won the law school's highest academic prize. He began his legal career by clerking for Judge John F. Kilkenny of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Professor Myers also worked for Jones, Day, Reavis & Pogue in Washington, D.C. He taught at Case Western Reserve University School of Law and the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law before joining the Ave Maria faculty. He is a co-editor of St. Thomas Aquinas and the Natural Law Tradition: Contemporary Perspectives (Catholic University of American Press, 2004) and a co-editor of Encyclopedia of Catholic Social Thought, Social Science, and Social Policy (Scarecrow Press, 2007). He has also published extensively on constitutional law in law reviews and also testified before Congressional and state legislative hearings on life issues. Married to Mollie Murphy, who is also on the faculty at Ave Maria School of Law, they are the proud parents of six children - Michael, Patrick, Clare, Kathleen, Matthew, and Andrew. http://www.avemarialaw.edu/index.cfm?event=faculty.bio&pid=11705E7D4E0111010366