Narratives and values: The rhetoric of the physician assisted suicide debate

Abstract

Despite the objections of those who argue that medicine is a scientific enterprise that does not allow the use of rhetoric, medical practice requires deliberation, persuasion, consent and the determination of correct action in the absence of complete information. Rhetoric is thus an integral part of medicine. This essay argues that the function of medicine as an art and as a social institution is impeded when the rhetorical nature of its practice is ignored. This claim is supported by a case study of two texts widely cited as landmarks in the physician‐assisted suicide debate of the 1990s: the anonymously authored “It's over, Debbie,” which appeared in the January, 1988 Journal of the American Medical Association and Quill's “Death and dignity: A case of individualized decision making,” published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1991.