In an interesting and sophisticated paper Mary Ford attempts to find a paradox and a number of contradictions in personhood theory which bear on the question of the right to die. Her paper, 'The Personhood Paradox and the Right to Die', devotes a large part of its content to developing a philosophically rich account of various notions of personhood from Kant and Locke to some contemporary personhood theorists such as Derek Parfit, Mary Ann Warren and Peter Singer. All this leads up to the identification of so called contradictions and paradoxes which are supposedly relevant to contemporary life and death decisions such as that in the case of Dianne Pretty. I am afraid it is at this point that the paper fails to be convincing. I suggest that there is no paradox, no contradictions and it is important for any alleged right to die to be clear about why this is.
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