Following a rapid increase in suicides in Japan during the 1990s, annual suicide numbers have since declined from over 30,000 to just above 20,000 in recent years with the enforcement of the Basic Act of Suicide Prevention in 2006. In contrast, in the UK, while suicide numbers are not as high, the rate of suicides is at its highest level since 2002 reaching 6,507 deaths in 2018.

There is growing recognition that suicide is more than a personal problem but a societal one that requires a public health approach. However, while the numbers can help to sing the praises of policies preventing suicide, they don’t prompt us to ask:

“Who has the right to prevent suicide?”

Join us for this seminar with Professor Richard Huxtable (Bristol University) and Dr Satoshi Kodama (Kyoto University) to discuss the ethical justifications for both its end and means. We will look to explore questions such as: ‘Should all suicide attempts be prevented or is there a case for “rational suicide”?’, and ‘Should a documentary on assisted suicide be regulated according to the WHO guidance for media professionals?’

About the contributors

Professor Richard Huxtable
Professor Richard Huxtable is Professor of Medical Ethics and Law and Director of the Centre for Ethics in Medicine, in the Medical School at the University of Bristol, UK. Qualified in law, socio-legal studies and bioethics, his research primarily concerns end-of-life decision-making, surgical ethics and clinical ethics. Richard’s books include Healthcare Ethics, Law and Professionalism (Routledge, 2018) and Law, Ethics and Compromise at the Limits of Life: To Treat or Not to Treat? (Routledge, 2012). He is PI on a Wellcome Trust collaborative project, Balancing Best Interests in Healthcare, Ethics and Law (BABEL) and is a member of various ethics committees, including those of the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners. He tweets at @ProfRHuxtable.

Dr Satoshi Kodama
Dr Satoshi Kodama is Associate Professor at the Department of Ethics in Kyoto University Graduate School of Letters. His background is moral and political philosophy, and he graduated from Kyoto University. Formerly he held a lectureship at the Department of Biomedical Ethics in the University of Tokyo Graduate School of Medicine. His research interests include moral theory (utilitarianism), moral methodology (the role of intuition in moral reasoning), ethics and evolution, end-of-life issues, resource allocation, and public health ethics. He has co-authored textbooks on biomedical ethics both in Japanese and English as well as translating Albert Jonsen’s Clinical Ethics and Tony Hope’s Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction, and Peter Singer’s The Life You Can Save. As well as writing many journal articles, he has published Utility and Intuition (in Japanese, 2011, which won the Watsuji prize by the Japanese Society for Ethics), and An Introduction to Utilitarianism (2012).

Book your place here.