A Request for Non-voluntary Euthanasia in Bangladesh: A Moral Assessment

Authors

Norman K. Swazo, North South UniversityFollow

ORCID

orcid.org/0000-0002-9551-2628

Institution/Affiliation

North South University

About the Author(s)

Professor Swazo has a PhD in philosophy from The University of Georgia (Athens, GA, USA). He specialises in ethics in international affairs, biomedical ethics, and recent European philosophy, and publishes on topics in comparative philosophy and religion.

Keywords

Involuntary active euthanasia, non-voluntary active euthanasia, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Bangladesh

Abstract

Government authorities in Bangladesh recently were placed in an awkward and extraordinary position of having to make a presumably difficult decision: how to respond to a man’s request to have his two sons and grandson euthanized. This is an extraordinary request for a developing country’s health service authorities to consider, especially in the context of a Muslim-majority population where any appeal to the legitimacy of suicide (and, by extension, physician-assisted suicide) would be automatically rejected as contrary to Islamic moral and jurisprudential principles. Here the case is reviewed in the context of arguments that engage non-voluntary euthanasia and the local context of inadequate health service delivery.

Article Number

6

DOI

10.15385/jbfp.2017.3.1.6

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Swazo, Norman K. (2017) "A Request for Non-voluntary Euthanasia in Bangladesh: A Moral Assessment," Bioethics in Faith and Practice: Vol. 3: No. 1, Article 6.
DOI: 10.15385/jbfp.2017.3.1.6
Available at: https://digitalcommons.cedarville.edu/bioethics_in_faith_and_practice/vol3/iss1/6

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