Russel Ogden, a sociologist at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in British Columbia, studies people with terminal illnesses who choose to take their own lives.
Ogden’s research has received significant media attention, including a recent piece from Inside Higher Education. Kwantlen Polytechnic University is trying to prevent Ogden from observing assisted suicides despite the approval he received from an ethics review board at the university. Currently, Ogden is barred from carrying out his research by the university, which has equated Ogden’s proposed observation of assisted suicides with participating in them himself.
Inside Higher Education reports:
The dispute has become public in the last week, with Canadian faculty groups charging that the university’s actions are a violation of academic freedom, and that the principles cited by the university endanger not only Ogden’s research, but the work of social scientists throughout the country who study illegal acts in part by observation. Sociologists in the United States say that the case is important for them as well — and illustrates how studying some of the cutting edge issues in bioethics can create challenging ethical and political issues for academics and universities.
Ogden is no stranger to controversy or to suicide, which he has been studying for 18 years. He first became interested in the subject when “as a teen, I had a couple of close friends who took their lives,” he said. “Those suicides had a profound impact on me.” Ogden doesn’t romanticize suicide. “I regret that they died. I wish that they were still here.”
But with legal and political debates growing about whether people with incurable diseases should be able to end their lives — and with some people not waiting for the law, and doing so — Ogden found the topic to be one in need of sociological inquiry.
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