[nukkad] Thoughts on Euthanasia

["Indian Rediff" <>]

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Some time back there was a discussion on this. I thought this would be a good time to resume this discussion. Especially since we are considering capital punishment on the one hand and mercy killing o the other. 

Mercy killing is one of the most controversial ethical subjects ever contemplated by us in modern times. Almost anything else can be discussed and using Occam's razor, can be defined to be either  mostly black .. or mostly white.

But this is a definite gray.

Given that mankind's life expectancy is increasing beyond the time that nature had awarded these bodies (in prehistoric times, reaching an age of 50 would have been considered an incredible achievement), we are bound to have more and more people with parts of their bodies dying more rapidly than others.

Now if we bear in mind that the background from which we have evolved, [e.g., if an animal (say a deer) is not fit and not well, the herd, which usually tries to protect ALL of its members, will abandon the sick or injured one - the conclusion we should draw from this is - survival of the HERD is more important than survival of any one member] is one of animals, it will soon be obviously that we are not behaving naturally. We keep saying that, in the human herd (so to speak), EVERYONE is equally important and should be saved. Alas, nature never intended this. 

In a very indirect way, euthanasia is nothing but a return to nature as far as human kind is concerned. And nature is NOT BENEVOLENT. Nature is very cruel. Nature is NOT known for altruism. There are reams of documentation available that will show you how cruel Nature actually is. But I would recommend reading almost any book by Richard Dawkins (three come to mind: The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, The Extended Phenotype: The long reach of the gene). 

The question at hand is euthanasia aka mercy killing. There are many version of this: 
A) Patient taking his/her own life 
B) Patient asking doctor to prescribe medicine and help (either actively or passively) the patient take his/her own life (effectively having the consent of the doctor) 
C) relatives deciding that a person in a comatose state for an extended period of time which the physicians believe there is a very low probability of the patient coming out of 
D) patient being denied physician care (that could save his/her life), leading to his/her death.

I may have missed a few other shades of gray but I think the above would be the four main categories of people being killed (as opposed to dying naturally). Of these D could almost certainly be categorised as murder. In fact I wouldn't be surprised to find legal precedent that does, in fact, show that this is murder. The remaining three are not very easy to decide.

Let us consider A. In today's world, someone, whether a patient or not, taking his/her own life is a crime. However, if that same person is suffering from a terminal disease where the end-date is known with some degree of certainty - don't you think easing the person's suffering should be foremost on our minds? Isn't prolonging someone's torture cruelty? Humans are not supposed to be cruel. And in such cases allowing the person to choose death over suffering is a more humane thing to do. Otherwise, what difference is there between us and animals?

In the case of B, it is the doctor that initiates the thought process and informs the patient that euthanasia is a choice that s/he can make. Is the doctor wrong in doing so? Is the doctor wrong in being sympathetic to the patient? These are the questions we must answer.

In the case of C, the relatives' motives are automatically suspect. The doctor's can only offer probabilities. There is no certainty in such cases. People have been known to recover from comatose states after years. But the probability of a person recovering is slim at best. Again, in the absence of more information it would be difficult to justify either action. I can think of at least ONE scenario where the patient is unplugged - viz., avaiability of beds in the ICU. If the place is like India, it is quite possible that for each bed there is more than one patient waiting in line. Unfortunately, when it comes time for actions here, the price of each human life varies and is dependent on their status, wealth, and contacts. Certainly not an easy quandary to resolve. I would compare this to the waiting list for organ's in the US and the manner in which the recipient is decided.

It is certainly possible that I have omitted some versions in my classification schema of A through D. I guess I have raised more questions than answered my own thoughts.

Please post your thoughts!

Indian

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