Euthanasia

While observing people at airport, a question popped up in my head: “Who to kill?” Apparently, I would enjoy the role of God, an angel of death, or a serial killer. Indeed, I can’t kill for idiocy, then nobody at airport would remain. Still, besides joy and idiocy, can I terminate a life to end its misery? We do this all the time to animals, and humans are animals. I have a patient with chronic disease, who consumes a lot of resources, and is not likely to be cured in this current life of ours. Can I consider that patient as a living being? Can I end this long standing agony with painless death? How can one know for sure that death is painless? And if the hurt of death would be less of all the sum of pain that the patient had suffered of. And if it is, how can a physician terminate one soul so harmlessly? Indeed, the fallacy here states that killing can be good deed, is it?

The standards or regulation to control euthanasia, which is merciful killing, are too broad. Oregon State, the first place to legalize such an action, suggests a terminal illness which kills the patient within six months as a criterion for physician-assisted dying. This act is called “Death with Dignity” which reflects that main attention toward the patient’s benefit. Still, who can tell for sure that a patient would die within six months? Medicine practice is based on statistical data, and on many occasions, this data proves to be incorrect. Yet, we can’t neglect other factors like the economic burden, health care cost containment, and to some extent “survival of the fittest.” One of Hitler’s main arguments in his “Racial Hygiene” that disabled people cost you money. Are we still practicing the same action under a different name like “Death with Dignity?”

Why would Hitler have done that? The concept of Social Darwinism was widely accepted in Europe and America. Sterilizing was broadly approved to those who carried hereditary defects. Sixty-three thousand people were sterilized on natural/human selection grounds in Sweden between 1935 and 1975. There’s no difference between terminating a life, or castrate it. What draws my attention the most is the fact that after World War II, this practice was still widely accepted. I don’t mean to be rude, but people didn’t have any problem with Hitler’s actions until he started killing Jews. Still, when I observe the reality around us in Saudi Arabia where inherited diseases flourish, I question the value of such an action. Can we sterilize people with genetic diseases? I can understand that Hitler was blinded by the obsession his race. Do we need a man as loving as Adolf Hitler in Saudi Arabia?

It’s time to face the real question: “What life is worth living?” One simple answer is that human life is always worth each moment to live, regardless of the quality of that life. I was searching for the origin of euthanasia in history, but unfortunately I found none. What I tend to believe is that we only encounter this problem now that we have the efficient technology to keep those who are meant to die, alive. Still, who is meant to die? The Death with Dignity Act in Oregon is very broad and here lies the problem: Such a decision should be tailored to fit each condition. No matter what the similarity between two identical cases with the same disease, we can’t treat them in the same way. Also, we can’t leave such a decision fully to a patient after telling him/her: “You are going to die within six months!” This is really rubbish. At the same time, I can’t say that doctors, solely, can take over.

You can't schedule an appointment with death. All you can do is say to it: "Not today!" Admittedly, I am a bit naive. Emotions control me easily. I've seen my chronic patient dying: Only one and a half years of age, neglecting the nine months inside the womb, passed full of suffering, agony, and deprived of all life’s joys. Is it worth it? I can't tell, only death can, whenever it decides. Nevertheless, the look she gave me the day before of her death was as if to say: "You can't take my life."  The bottom line, regardless of the misery patient had gone through, death has a more profound impact. Fallacy-wise, the energy which was given to start a life can't be opposed unless with same amount of energy.