Dr Phillip Nitschke, the director of Exit International, is giving public workshops to advise people about the age of 50 on how they can take their own lives under the risk of imprisonment. He intends to give people information the “‘best drugs’” and techniques to commit suicide so they can craft a reliable and peaceful ‘exit plan’”(National Post), so that they do not need to get others to do for them and get them into trouble. His workshop is controversial due to the legal grey area that he is stepping into. The Vancouver Public Library has backed out of hosting his talks, many people have threatened legal action, right-to-die advocates applaud his candour, while the courts are unclear on whether his talk is legal. As a supporter of euthanasia, I welcome his actions, but I have some reservations about this.
There is a fair chance that some of the people who attend the talks will eventually enter a late stage of some terminal illness, and it is this group that Dr Nitschke primarily wishes to address. These people will benefit from having this information, because it would help them to make plans that allow them to relief their agony instead of suffering needlessly as they unwillingly cling on to a hopeless existence or implicating others as they seek to be let released from their misery.
However, not all the people who obtain this information will end up in the late stage of a terminal illness. These people might, at some other point in time, contemplate suicide for other reasons, and this information would make it easier for them to take this irreversible step, and I think it would not be possible to avoid this highly undesirable scenario.
What would be better, though, is that only people who are likely to end up in the first scenario should be given access to this information. But what would be even better is that assisted suicide at end-of-life scenarios is legalized. If assisted suicide is legalized, the doctor would be able to freely discuss this option and the arrangements with the patient who is likely to become terminally ill, and the patient would not need to resort to ending his life himself. There would not be a need for Dr Nitschke to give these lectures and risk having more people committing suicide when they are not under great physical agony in a terminal illness.
If all patients received the best possible care that minimized their suffering, then there would be fewer requests for assisted suicide, and all the remaining requests would be taken seriously. However, due to the high cost of healthcare, that is currently not the case. Those who are poor would be under a greater pressure to consider the option of assisted suicide, and this is an undesirable scenario that we should try to avoid. But what other options are there? Better healthcare for the poor and higher taxes for the rest? Or ban assisted suicide, remain at the status quo and give the poor with terminal illness no choice but to live a dreaded existence? None of the options are palatable, but at least this doctor provides an additional option.
Sources:
1 comment:
I certainly agree with you regarding the benefits of assisted suicide. Instead of allowing these terminally ill patients to ascertain a painless means of ending their lives on their own, legalization of assisted suicide would allow for a greater doctor-patient discourse on the matter. The process doesn’t need controversial workshops by people like Dr. Nitschke.
Where my views differ, however, is in the motive for legalizing assisted suicide. You mention that the legalization of assisted suicide would prevent Nitschke from influencing people who are considering suicide for reasons other than a terminal illness; but, the premise for that argument is solely this idea of “influence.” It helps people with suicidal thoughts carry out the final fatal act, but is that really the issue with suicide? I would venture that the bigger issue with it is the person’s mental state. That is why we have these people go to psychiatrists that help them overcome their depression. Suicide, in that sense, is an active response to their passive emotions. Nitschke only helps them fulfill the act they set to do- what’s wrong with that? If I want to do something, and something is helping me achieve that thing, it would be contradictory to call it a problem. So what really is wrong with Dr. Nitschke’s talks?
Plain and simple, Nitschke’s workshops are little more than how-to manuals, a spin on Suicide for Dummies. “Step right up,” he seems to say, “and I’ll show you some of my most prized methods.” He takes a highly personal matter like suicide (needless to mention its emotional ramifications on friends and loved ones) and turns it into a free-for-all, a roller coaster ride for anyone that passes the chronological “you-must-be-this-tall” line. As Alzheimer’s patients like Bill Saunders consult their spouses over this “personal decision,” (1) it is disturbing that Nitschke is handing out muffins and fielding all questions he gets at a gala-like “workshop.” In short, he perverts the matter of assisted suicide, when these issues need to be reserved for the clinic.
A doctor and patient dealing with assisted suicide together would preserve some degree of respect for humanity. The doctor alone knows fully about the patient’s clinical condition, and the decision-making process itself is much more significant than the different means of going about suicide. Currently, doctor-patient communication is considered an important part of end-of-life care (2). If vigilantism is the common man taking the government’s job into his own hands, Dr. Nitschke may just be your poster child for ‘medical vigilantism’ – taking the doctor’s job of helping patients make literally life-or-death decisiosn into his own hands. Of course, the doctor can only use his discretion and talk about the matter if assisted suicide is legalized, and that step would open the discussion and encourage greater advances in understanding the ethics behind the issue at hand.
Let's hope he's not too influential.
---
1) http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4527078
2) Hayden, Laurel A. "Helping Patients with End-Of-Life Decisions" The American Journal of Nursing. 99 (4) 1999.http://www.jstor.org/stable/3472224
Post a Comment