Euthanasia And The Dying Debate

Euthanasia and the dying debate, June 22, 2010.

A human can survive for weeks without food. They live on as chemicals flood the brain and the organs fail. For some people this is immensely painful, while the fortunate quickly fall into a stupor.

Either way, the SA Voluntary Euthanasia Society accurately describes this death as a shameful cruelty.

This anonymous 70-something woman has diabetes, so there's a good chance that being denied insulin will kill her faster than starvation or dehydration - a blessing of sorts.

A landmark court judgment means her carers will be able to withhold food, drink, and insulin. So she will die, slowly. Because we still do not allow voluntary euthanasia, she will just have to wait as her organs shut down and her heart stops beating. Hopefully she has lost consciousness long before that happens.

Supreme Court Justice Chris Kourakis made the ruling last week that this refusal of sustenance was not suicide, and that by following her wishes her nursing home was not assisting in a suicide.

In his reasoning, he said with clear empathy: "She wrote of a despair which she could no longer endure."

So her period of suffering will be shortened, but to stop her suffering entirely - with a fatal dose of morphine, say - is still a bridge too far.

The so-far-successful minority who oppose voluntary euthanasia have many reasons.

Once all the religious arguments are stripped away - as they should be - there is just a core objection, the lazy, hazy slippery slope argument.

People argue that if voluntary euthanasia is allowed, it will inexorably lead to involuntary euthanasia.

They believe scheming relatives will collude with evil doctors to bring a premature end to life.

Those scheming relatives, if they really wanted to get their grubby hands on whatever loot they think they are owed, will probably work out a way to do that anyway.

Voluntary euthanasia laws could be set up to have checks and double checks, to keep the life-and-death decisions out of the hands of such relatives, and return it to the individual.

A crucial part of that will be making sure individuals have every opportunity to make their wishes clear well before death or incapacitation is imminent.

As for doctors, the small number of cold-blooded beasts who play God with patients' lives and deal out death with a too-liberal hand are doing it anyway.

And those dealing out death with a sympathetic hand are also doing it anyway.

Face it, we should hope that our medical professionals, when faced with a patient in immense pain and despair with no hope of recovery, would have the humanity to help them die, if that's what they want. Also, the only way to distinguish a too-eager euthanising doctor from a reluctant one is to make the process altogether legal and transparent.

Voluntary euthanasia, if anything, would make end-of-life decisions much more accessible. Right now, behind closed doors, we don't really know what is happening. We do know that families and doctors work together to end people's lives, usually under the guise of pain relief. So bring it into the open, and all these claims and concerns can be tested.

Maybe it's time to properly engage those who continue to oppose voluntary euthanasia, and work out exactly what the stumbling block is.

Maybe seeing the horror of someone starving to death would help. It is hard to imagine anyone who has witnessed someone slowly die - their hair falling out and their skin pulling back from their lips, their gargling through tubes and withering muscles and pressure sores - could still stand in the way of a peaceful end.

DYING DEBATE

AN Adelaide-based group, Christians Supporting Choice for Voluntary Euthanasia (C4VE), says that nothing in the Bible rules out voluntary euthanasia. They argue that:

• As Australians age, a growing number suffer lingering deaths, against their wishes.
• Despite very high standards of palliative care in Australia, intolerable suffering can't be relieved in every case.
• Effects can be painful, degrading or cause other intolerable suffering such as loss of critical faculties or a lingering death of dependency.
• Many committed Christians support choice for voluntary euthanasia, holding it to be consistent with Jesus' message of love and compassion.
• The main opposition to law reform arises from Christians in the fundamentalist churches, and C4VE is seeking to counteract their disturbing and dogmatic approach.

By Tory Shepherd, The Advertiser, via AdelaideNow.