Book excerpt: Fatal Freedom is an eloquent defense of every individual’s right to choose F a voluntary death. By maintaining statutes that determine that voluntary death is not legal, Thomas Szasz believes that our society is forfeiting one of its basic freedoms and causing the psychiatric medical establishment to treat individuals in a manner that is disturbingly inhumane. Society’s penchant for defining behavior it terms objectionable as a dis­ease has created a psychiatric establishment that exerts far too much influ­ence over how and when we choose to die. In a compelling argument that clearly and intelligently addresses one of the most significant ethical issues of our time, Szasz compares suicide to other practices that historically began as sins, became crimes, and now arc seen as mental illnesses.