Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death

By: Kathleen Stock Published: 2026 304 pages

Briefly, what is this book about?

The general topic is right there in the subtitle, but Stock separates out two distinct ideological foundations. There are those who consider assisted death (a term she prefers over "assisted dying") to be a way of eliminating suffering. And then there are those who view it as a principle of liberty: If we allow people absolute bodily autonomy, why should someone be prevented from choosing to end their life? One problem with having two ideologies is that they might end up pointing in different directions. And indeed one of the big themes of the book is exactly this tension. But the bigger issue is that proponents of assisted death end up using whichever ideological framework is the most convenient for their argument at the time.

When these different ideologies are distilled down to the practice of implementing a legal "right to die"—which is to say actually assisting in the actual death of actual individuals—it results in incoherent standards. This incoherence leads to misinterpretation. The misinterpretation allows for opportunistic expansion. The expansion leads to abuses not foreseen by the law's framers, and these abuses lead to deaths we might otherwise want to avoid. Some people might call these deaths murders.

What authorial biases should I be aware of?

If you've heard of Stock previous to this it was almost certainly for her gender-critical views, which led to her being forced out of her position at the University of Sussex in 2021. I don't think it's fair to call her right-wing, but she is definitely iconoclastic.

Who should read this book?

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