My book What Kind of Death, The ethics of determining one’s own death, appeared with Routledge in 2023. The book  discusses personal and medical decision-making about the end of life, and the regulation of these decision by law and medical professional morality.  

The following papers about end-of-life issues have not been included in the book. The papers marked by an asterix (*) can be downloaded from this page by using the relevant links on the page Publications.

The Slippery Slope Argument. In: Peter Singer, Helga Kuhse eds., Companion to Bioethicsm sec. ed. 2009. Limited free access. Download. 

*‘Gij zult niet doodslaan’, Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 101 (2009), 164-195. (Thou shalt not kill) Focus-article, with comments by Inez de Beaufort, Marcus Düwell, John Griffiths, Martin van Hees, Liesbet Vanhaute, Henri Wijsbek, 196-217, and Reply to comments, 218-225.

The Regulation of Euthanasia: How successful is the Dutch System? In:  Stuart J. Youngner, Gerrit K. Kimsma eds. Physician-Assisted Death in Perspective: Assessing the Dutch Experience, Cambridge University Press 2021, 351-391. Download. 

*De morele grondslagen van het gezondheidsrecht: de erfenis van Leenen. In: Ethiek en Gezondheidsrecht, Preadvies voor de Vereniging voor Gezondheidsrecht. Den Haag: SDU uitgevers 2014, p. 13-89. (The moral foundations of health law) Download. 

*Comforting the parents by administering neuromuscular blockers to the dying child.  A conflict between ethics and law? Journal of Applied Philosophy, 31 (2014), 91-103.

*Do we need a threshold conception of competence? Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 19 (2016): 71-83.

*Relieving one’s relatives from the burdens of care. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 21 (2018), 403-410.

Is Human Dignity the Ground of Human Rights? In: Marcus Düwell, Jens Braarvig, Roger Brownsword, Dietmar Mieth eds. The Cambridge Handbook of Human Dignity: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2014, 200-207.(See also What Kind of Death, ch. 9.3.) Download. 

*The medical exception to the prohibition of killing: a matter of the right intention? Ratio Juris 32 (2019): 157-176.

*Kunnen wij onze eigen dood onder ogen zien? Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte 111 (2019) (4): 643-664. (Can we face up to our own death?)

Levens wegen: commentaar op twee draaiboeken. In: Ellen Segeren, Nico Groen red. Ethiek in Tijden van Corona, Den Haag: Centrum voor Ethiek en Gezondheid 2020, 85-94. (Selection of patients for treatment in a situation of extreme scarcity) https://www.ceg.nl/documenten/publicaties/2020/12/15/levens-wegen-commentaar-op-twee-draaiboeken

*Decriminalizing Assisted Suicide Services: a Comment on the Decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht) of 26 February 2020, European Constitutional Law Review 16 (2020): 713-732.

I am still working on four additional papers in this area:

Can existence be a harm or a benefit? Against the standard Epicurean argument that it cannot, almost all recent authors argue that it can. The paper suggests that all these attempts only show that existence and non-existence can be impersonal goods or bads, but not that they can be goods or bads to the existing people themselves.

The Sting of Death. Why additive theories of well-being fail to meet the Epicurean challenge. This paper argues that only structural or holistic theories of well-being can explain the badness of death. Cf. What Kind of Death, chapter 15.

Two Problems of a Benefit Theory of the Right to Life. The paper attempts to refute two standard objections against a benefit or interest theory of this right: that the interest in life is variable, but the right has equal weight in all cases, and that a benefit theory cannot explain the special position of people whom the right is owed to. The objections can be defused by attending to what it means for a right to protect an interest.

Are there any rights that cannot be waived?  The paper argues for a positive answer to this question, including the rights to life, to personal freedom and to body integrity (in core cases) into the category of unwaivable rights. Cf. What Kind of Death, chapter 9.