After a session of playing internet hopscotch (you start on one article and, after a few clicks, you find yourself on a topic far removed from your starting point), I found myself on the website of the Globe and Mail, a Canadian news source. This is the article I landed at: "Legalized Euthanasia Only a Breath Away".
The constant reference to "assisted suicide/euthanasia" annoyed me: the benign-sounding "euthanasia" (hell, that sounds really soporific!) vs. the rather more loaded term "assisted suicide" (visions of Mrs Doyle whispering in your ear as you stand on the cliff's edge "Go on, go on, go on, go on...."). Leaving aside the terminology, let's consider the idea of a 'good death' and free choice.
'Euthanasia' has its roots (as a word, at least) in Greek and means "good death". The Hippocratic Oath (attributed to the Greek physician, Hippocrates), contains the warning that treatment should "do no harm" to the patient, The modern version of Hippocrates oath by Dr Louis Lasagna, contains the line "Above all, I must not play at God". These two quotes neatly tie together the dichotomy in 'modern' medicine: the Christian tradition in Western medicine that reveres suffering as 'saintly' (c.f. Jesus suffering on the cross) and, therefore, something to be accepted gratefully and the need of doctors to attempt to 'cure' even when all hope is gone.
Is there not a point when a good doctor should say, "I can do no more for you", to not prolong the pretence that the physician can act as God and hand down a cure? Once it is acknowledged that a patient cannot be 'cured', it should be down to all 'care' staff to ensure that a patient enjoys a 'good death', with high quality palliative care as one option. Another option, however, should be to allow me, the owner of the body I walk around in, to determine where and when I leave this mortal coil. The main nursing handbook from the 60s acknowledged that not all diseases and conditions are curable and one of the outcomes of a treatment may be death. In such a case, it advised the focus of caring activities should be to help the patient achieve a good death.
I get frustrated when those who advocate the status quo - i.e. that control over the end of our lives should remain with the state - say that allowing us, the poor, misguided people, to have this control would immediately lead to abuse by relatives wishing to hasten the death of a rich aunt or get rid of that 'difficult' grandparent! I am sure it is not beyond the whit of us humans that we might be able to develop some controls, checks and balances to ensure this kind of abuse does not happen. But this argument is invariably a smokescreen that deflects away from all those perfectly 'sane', normal, shoppers in, say, the Trafford Centre who can exercise 'free will' throughout their lives (buy this, don't buy that. buy LOTS of that etc.) but are not allowed to choose to die at a time and place of their choosing if the condition they have means that 'choice' will soon become a slightly compromised concept.
A paragraph from the article:
People who support legalizing assisted suicide/euthanasia simply assume that individual autonomy is the value that takes priority. But research shows that the most likely reasons people want assisted suicide/euthanasia are fear of being abandoned – dying alone and unloved – and of being a burden on others. Surely our response to such fears shouldn’t be to help them to kill themselves or to give them a lethal injection.
"Research". Good term! Makes things sound solid, authoritative and....but, wait a minute: what 'research'? Where was it published? Who peer reviewed it? If you are going to state that research supports your case, then be prepared to include a link to it. Otherwise, be like me and just write your opinion down, but don't claim special dispensation: they are just your views.
I wholeheartedly agree that there is a fear of impending abandonment, of neglect, as I get older. That is not the factor that will send me off to Dignitas and it should not be the reason that we introduce any loosening on the the laws around assisted suicide. We need to develop better elder/dementia care, so that patients are not consigned to 'granny farms' to sit in a lounge for 12 hours a day but instead are engaged in work and play and human interaction, just as they were for the first 70 or 80 years of their lives. Having control over one's time of death is NOT about getting rid of older people. In fact, with high quality, interesting and enjoyable elder care, maybe people might actually want to go on living rather than potentially choosing to opt out of a lingering 'existence' in an unfriendly environment.
I am simply baffled that, in world where 'choice' is lauded and placed so centrally in the mission statement of every organisation, from Tesco to UK plc, we should be denied 'choice' in one of the most important points in our life's journey. Just as 'free choice' in so many other settings is little more than a chimera, so politicians blathering on about 'empowerment' and 'personal control' will mean little if this final choice is not given to adults.
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