History "lite" in modern American bioethics.

This article explores a disconcerting phenomenon. In recent years, in writing on the subject of assisted suicide, several bioethicists have made extraordinary historical claims. The history of Western moral theories that exhibit disapproval of all forms of suicide is well known. Nevertheless, the bioethicists have claimed that some of Europe's most prominent early modern moral philosophers never believed in the inalienable right to life. This claim is quite controversial because this right is an important basis for secular moral opposition to assisted suicide. Irrespective of whether or not opposition to assisted suicide is philosophically justified, the philosophers the bioethicists write about did in fact believe in the inalienable right to life. Bioethicists can only come to their conclusions concerning the philosophers by employing an improper historical methodology.