Suicide and Self-Starvation (IN: Suicide: Right or Wrong?, edited by J Donnelly)

In this article the author deals with the issue of whether or not hunger strikes can rightly be considered suicides. In so doing the author attempts to avoid dealing with the propaganda of the IRA which claimed that Bobby Sands’ death was murder by the British government. Rather, the author develops a definition of suicide that involves the act of a person who noninstrumentally intends his death, & allow all instrumental self-killings to evade the verdict of suicide. (17 refs.)