Assisted Suicide And Euthanasia: Preserving The Sanctity Of Life Part 2

Everyone was singing, girl is washed up On Redondo beach and everyone is so sad. I was looking for you, are you gone gone ? Pretty little girl, everyone cried. She was the victim of sweet suicide. I went looking for you, are you gone gone ?
Patti Smith, Redondo Beach, 1975.

"I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable — except for having just jumped." Ken Baldwin who survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge.

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Hugh Anderson's article titled, "The death for euthanasia could be death for us all"in the Montreal Gazette, contained a couple of paragraphs that left me queasy:

"Imagine carrying around with you at all times a sort of get-out-of-hospital-alive card, sometimes called a sanctuary card. Its message: I do not want to be killed even though my quality of life seems to you to be unbearable.

Hard to imagine? In Holland and Belgium right now such cards are in demand."

"...The strange thing is that we do have an ominous real-life or real-death demonstration of what this kind of thing can lead to. Holland legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide three decades ago, first in practice and later by law. Advocates said it would be limited to competent adults who are terminally ill and ask to be killed. Then it was extended to competent adults with incurable illnesses or disabilities, although not terminally ill. Then it was extended to competent adults who were depressed but otherwise not physically ill. Then it was extended to incompetent adult patients like Alzheimer's sufferers, on the basis that they would have asked for death if they were competent.

And now it is legal for doctors in Holland to kill infants, if parents agree, if they believe their patients' suffering is intolerable or incurable. This is a long way from the soothing image of an elderly person choosing with full understanding to die with dignity, assisted by compassionate relatives and friends."

This part reminds me of Peter Singer and his chilling version of bio-ethics. There isn't a whole lot distinguishing eugenics (even Nazi social engineering) from what Singer posits. For an interesting read, see Margaret Sommerville/Peter Singer debate here.

For his part, philosopher and psychiatrist Thomas Szasz argues suicide is the most basic right of all. If freedom is self-ownership, ownership over one's own life and body, then the right to end that life is the most basic of all. But he does not believe physicians have a place in preventing or assisting in suicide. In fact, he applies a scathing attack on "euthanasia as practiced in the Netherlands as nothing more than physician assisted murder of the Holocaust."

Personally, I agree. It's also state-sanctioned murder.

We speak of "safeguards" but who really believes safeguards to be effective with such an issue? The safeguards are meaningless when the process gets infected with political and money concerns.

Which brings me to a letter to the editor I read:

"Being of sound mind and body, I do hereby declare my steadfast commitment and irrevocable desire to cling to life with every available means - medical technological or miraculous - even if everyone else around me disagrees.

I insist not only on being hooked up to any and all life-sustaining equipment, but demand that the equipment itself be hooked up to emergency generators in case the power fails.

For those around me who declare themselves unable to cope with my decision or my suffering, might I suggest that they consider euthanasia for themselves. After all it's their misery not mine. As for those in the medical profession who might feel that they would be doing me a service by ending my life with dignity, I say, just make sure the hydro bill is paid and leave my dignity to its rightful owner."

Alex Stavropoulos

I applaud this letter since it confronts the prevailing view which is presently taking root.

I indeed lament the lack of debate concerning the issue. We're using big words like "ethics" and "dignity" but do we really know what the imply in the context of euthanasia?

Here's the conclusion of one researcher:

"The definition of euthanasia remains narrow, with terms such as „unbearable suffering‟ continuing to be interpreted widely. There is not adequate protection for the disabled, elderly, children or anyone with reduced autonomy and little appreciation for the fact that people can come out of suffering. An alarming reality is that non-voluntary euthanasia has been justified as „necessary‟ or in some cases even good palliative care. Palliative care, whilst improved, is still not sufficiently provided. This is indicated partly by a cut in funding. Reporting, also improved, remains inadequate. Whilst there has been an improvement of compliance with guidelines it remains as John Keown wrote: „The reassuring picture of the euthanasia landscape portrayed by the Dutch is surreal."

Indeed, the most startling fact beginning to emerge is doctors in Belgium and Holland are beginning to kill people without consent.

Sommerville notes:

"...the desire of so many Oregon officials to keep from public scrutiny the facts about assisted suicide in Oregon, is particularly troublesome. … Particularly disturbing in Oregon — and most similar to the Netherlands — is that those administering the law and those sanctioned by government to analyze its operation have become its advocates and its defenders." "By 1995 there had been an increase in the number of deaths in which physicians gave pain medication with the explicit intention of ending the patient’s life from 1,350 cases [in 1990] to 1,896 (1.4 percent of all Dutch deaths). … As reported by the physicians in the 1995 study, in more than 80 percent of these cases (1,537 deaths), no request for death was made by the patient. Since these are cases of nonvoluntary, and involuntary (if the patient was competent), euthanasia, this is a striking increase in the numbers of lives terminated without request and a refutation of the investigators’ claim that there has been perhaps a slight decrease in the number of such cases." As a result of such information becoming available, a new group of people who oppose euthanasia is emerging. The traditional opponents are those who believe it is inherently wrong to kill another human being. The more recent opponents — some of whom have favoured legalization in the past13 — are coming to believe that abuses cannot be prevented and that the most vulnerable people in our societies — especially disabled and aged people — would be placed at the greatest risk of being victims of the abuse of legalized euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide."

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It must be made clear, there's a distinction with cases of extreme pain and terminal diseases with what is being discussed here. The point of this post is to convey the path it can lead us onto. It's as if we become more and more comfortable with death (if not indifference to life) as literally a means to an end.

It's not just the Dutch who have grappled with this; it's just that they've decided to cross the pond. In Italy, the Eluana case has certainly led to debate there. Man of Roma discusses it here. In the United States we had the Schiavo case and in Canada Richard Latimer. Man of Roma does a great job describing how ancient societies and Christian world viewed suicide. There are many philosophical views about suicide.

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Certainly, something is happening in society regarding assisted suicide. It's not enough to say "well people will continue to kill themselves by barbaric means so why not get a doctor to do it?" This logic is replete with so many holes and short sightedness it demands further investigation.

I will ask a question that may not seem to correlate to the discussion here but I think it does in some way:

Are we a post-nihilist society?

Are the lines between science, logic, compassion, indifference and murder now blurred?