A review of Do Not Go Gentle: The Case Against Assisted Death by Kathleen Stock; The Bridge Street Press; 304 pages (April 2026)

I have never made so many margin notes. This topic is more divisive and emotive than most, and it has affected me personally in various ways. Kathleen Stock’s new book about assisted dying opens with a discussion of suicide, of which there have been two in my family. A good friend of mine did substantial lobbying for the recently failed UK Private Members Bill for assisted dying, and someone I know of chose an assisted death (in another country).

Stock, the author of Material Girls (I’m a big fan of that book), is a professional philosopher. I am not. While I was writing this review, I consulted the academic literature, but I am neither an ethicist nor a medic. Stock is opposed to the legalisation of assisted dying; I support it. Although a majority of people in the United Kingdom support some form of legalised assisted dying—as do most people in other jurisdictions—those who oppose it deserve a careful hearing. A philosophically rigorous counter-argument to assisted dying would be a genuine contribution to the debate. Does this book provide it?

Archetypes and Suicide

Stock organises her thoughts around three archetypes: the (radical) Freedom Lover, the Moderate Freedom Lover, and the Merciful Helper. She acknowledges that these are not real people. They are constructs used to represent clusters of philosophical arguments. But they irk because they are caricatures. Instead of engaging with those who support assisted dying, the flippant tone flips the finger. This does not help her to attack the case for legalised dying. “The Freedom Lover,” she writes, “is saying there is a moral obligation upon others not to interfere in your suicide attempt. They think there is a right to die in the precise sense that others should not hinder you [emphasis in original].” Stock makes a case against the Freedom Lover, but the Freedom Lover does not represent the tendency of thought she is opposing. It is a straw man.

There is evidence of this. In the first systematic review to synthesise the views of non-health professionals on assisted dying, Hendry et al. drew on sixteen qualitative studies and 94 surveys across multiple countries and legal contexts. Four consistent motivating themes emerged: concerns about poor quality of life (unbearable suffering, loss of dignity, dependency, loss of self); the desire for a good quality of death (autonomy, control, the right time); concerns about potential abuse; and the importance of an individual’s moral and religious stance. Conspicuously absent from this evidence base is the libertarian absolutism that Stock's Freedom Lover embodies—the insistence that any interference in any self-determined death is coercion, the indifference to those left behind, the breezy dismissal of transient states. 

Concerning suicide, Stock is right that intervention can prevent a fatal response to a transient state that does not reflect the person’s deeper self. This is important, and the empirical literature on suicide prevention supports it. But it is a point about crisis intervention, not about assisted dying for terminally ill people who have made a sustained and considered request. Stock moves between these contexts too easily, and her argument suffers as a result. Suicide in the context of psychiatric crisis and assisted dying in the context of terminal illness are not the same phenomenon. Beginning the book with a sustained discussion of solo suicide—including the cases of Kurt Cobain and Virginia Woolf—establishes a frame that does not illuminate the matter at hand.