The inalienable right to take a life
By Miguel Guanipa (12/27/06)
Life did not deal Piergiorgio Welby a good hand. The president of a patient's advocacy group who recently published a book and even had his own blog, Mr. Welby reached a point where he felt that his life was no longer worth living. The reason was because Mr. Welby suffered from an advanced case of muscular dystrophy which confined him to a bed and required that others take care of his basic needs for subsistence.
Last week, Dr. Mario Riccio, an anesthesiologist who volunteered to “help” Mr. Welby, sedated him intravenously and at his own request removed the respirator he’d been connected to for the last nine years, resulting in Mr. Welby’s departure from this world. The case has reignited what in my estimation is a misnomer dubbed as “the right to die” debate.
I never really thought of dying as a right per se. It seems to me that a right is something that we could somehow be deprived of through the abuse or overextension of others. Dying is really more of an inevitable consequence of the immutable laws of nature; not one person will ever be deprived of it. I believe if anything, this debate should be more about who has “the right to take a life”.
Having said that, to ask if it is humane to “pull the plug” on a terminally ill patient is in essence a moral question that aims at engaging that debate.
Some, like Dr. Riccio, will argue that the person who performs this service is primarily moved by compassion for the one who is suffering. But it is fair to ask if that compassion rises above the level of that which one ordinarily feels for an ailing family pet, where the reluctance to endure the hardship of caring for the ailing subject outweighs the desire to continue to seek healing for the former; the type of compassion that is a very close cousin of apathy.
Which makes one wonder if people a century ago - arguably more inclined to consult the hand of providence on such matters – had decided on euthanizing anyone who suffered from what was thought to be an incurable disease, they may not have procured for us the breakthroughs which thrive in the medical world today, for rather than continuing in their efforts to find more life affirming alternatives, they would have settled for a quick fix.
One could well argue that what spurred many of these technological advances was the perseverance of the ancients in seeking ways to heal the manifold illnesses that afflict us rather than surrender to the mysterious forces of nature and simply remove the sick person from their midst.
Far too often the inevitable alternative lacking the more advanced medical resources that we enjoy today may have been to simply opt for the latter. Hence a beast of burden with a broken leg would be shot dead, not just to be put out of its misery, but also because it was no longer useful. Today we can put a cast on the same horse, and not euthanize it simply because we can no longer count on it for a pleasure ride or to win the Kentucky Derby; which speaks to the fact that it is the horse’s interests we have in mind, not ours. We may ask why it is that we can not offer the same hope to our fellow human beings instead of trying to find more ingenious ways to dispose of them.
This question represents one of the principal objections to euthanasia and is important for the present debate because one can not ignore that medical advances which allow a person to live longer and the availability of medicines which can alleviate that person’s suffering are a fact of modern life. The question of allowing a terminally ill person to simply expire since their time has come becomes thornier when we acknowledge that the quality of that person’s life could be improved by availing ourselves of these modern marvels of science.
But at some point we are forced to deal with the subject’s own wishes, which is where Mr. Welby’s case comes into view. Such wishes are often predicated on the conviction that we are all masters of our destinies and our bodies and lives belong to us.
Before addressing the alleged merits of this conviction we may first say that if the subject wishes to die in order to merely avoid suffering one can not escape the fact that at the core of his wish is a very self-centered appraisal of his own existence that ignores the wishes of others, whether we are speaking of the immediate family or a society that has yet to fully accept the “death with dignity” arrangement that euthanasia proponents advocate. This selfish attitude is directly linked to the impression – which upon careful reflection is really more of an illusion – that our bodies are our property and that we are indeed masters of our own destiny. If such was the case we could simply will ourselves to die and thus avoid the moral conundrum of making others complicit in our ghastly deed.
To imply that a suffering person’s decision to end his life is an act of selfishness may sound rather cruel; but a person who suffers does not have an obligation only to himself. There are others who have a vested interest in the well being of that person; those who are willing to endure together with the suffering person - in as much as it is possible for them to share in his plight - and also share in the hope that he would someday be restored to wholeness.
But in today's inverted morality ending suffering by killing the patient is perceived as an act of compassion. In what is seen as the ultimate selfless act, the suffering person consents to his own murder so as not to presumably bequeath a burden upon those who may have to be responsible for his care. Thus a mutual covenant is forged between the party who assents to the killing of the loved one in the name of compassion and the one to be killed consents in the name of altruism, when in fact the former is hovering emotionally a shade above indifference while the latter is engaging in a very selfish and cowardly act.
The overriding criterion behind this argument is the quality of life and the levels of suffering to which the persons involved are or should be subjected to. Such standards will remain vague until we legally delineate what it is that constitutes an unacceptable form of existence; in other words, which lives are worth living and which are not. That this determining factor is remarkably similar to that employed by people who find a keen interest in eugenics seems to be of little concern to modern believers in the euthanasia movement.
A corollary to this criterion is the notion that there is little if any redeeming value to the process of suffering, hence it must be avoided at all costs, necessarily culminating in the termination of the one who suffers. This is the view held by many of those who see suicide as a viable alternative; even the doctor who removed Mr. Welby’s respirator described his patient' plight as "unbearable torture".
But it would be a terrible mistake to teach a society that suffering must be avoided at all costs, since to live means that at certain junctures we will suffer. And though there are different degrees of suffering, one can argue that none is fully devoid of purpose or can be judged a “pointless suffering”, as the Doctor called Mr. Welby’s.
This kind of nebulous rhetoric surrounding the “right to die” debate misses what should be the central topic of discussion, which is the difference that exists between letting someone die naturally and actively assisting them in committing suicide.
There is a fine line between the options of taking deliberate action to dispose of someone and not artificially hindering nature from taking its due course. Dr. Riccio – conscious of the legal repercussions attached to the fundamental difference between these two options - wisely chose to label his act as “a suspension of therapies” rather than euthanasia, which is illegal in his country. In Mr. Welby’s case the therapies consisted of a respirator and a feeding tube; which begs the question of who decides at which point therapeutic measures constitute "extraordinary means" of keeping a person alive.
While, as I mentioned earlier, death can not be avoided, we should care for the dying in their suffering instead of seeking to hasten their death by artificial means such as the cocktail of sedatives Dr. Ricci administered to Mr. Welby before removing his life support system. Refusing medical treatment and actively aiding someone with death as an end are two fundamentally different things. The former is morally acceptable while the latter is morally abhorrent.
One can not help but notice the curious interpolation of similar ethical challenges that also surround the issue of abortion; on one hand we are debating the morality of making a personal decision based upon whatever the dominant premises are for ascertaining when life is supposed to begin while on the other hand we are facing a similar dilemma, only the question rests upon the parallel premises for determining when life should end.
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