‘Half in love with easeful Death’: Rational Suicide and the Elderly

If we are lucky, the aging process eventuates in old age. But old age brings its own concerns, including how to manage the inevitable end. This question can be particularly acute for the population often labeled the ‘frail elderly’: those without any single life-threatening medical condition but with a multiplicity of less serious complaints—physical, psychological, and social—which can combine to rob life of all further meaning and encourage the thought that it is ‘time to go’. For them the issue can become whether, and how, to hasten the end. This paper will explore four related questions: (1) whether, and when, suicide might be rational for the elderly; (2) whether it can be ethical for a second party to assist in a rational suicide; (3) whether medical practitioners, in particular, can reasonably be expected to provide this assistance; and (4) whether jurisdictions that permit legal access to a medically-assisted death should expand their eligibility criteria to accommodate those who are ‘tired of life’