Assisted Suicide

Two reports in the British media have brought this issue back into focus in the past week.

First, a famous British orchestra conductor went with his wife to the Dignitas clinic in Zurich, Switzerland, where they both took their own lives. She was suffering from a terminal cancer, but what caused such controversy was that he had no such terminal condition. His sight and hearing were both failing, and the two loves of his life, his wife and his music, were being taken from him. Furthermore, he would be dependent on total strangers for his most basic needs, as he was no longer able to care for himself. He, apparently, reasoned that without her support, and without his music, he had nothing left to live for.

The second case is a long running one, and involves a woman who is slowly dying of an incurable disease. She wishes to choose her own time of death, and does not want her husband prosecuted if he helps her to end her life by taking her to Dignitas. If that possibility remains, then she feels she must end her own life earlier, whilst she is still able to travel alone. As such, she has been seeking a clarification of the law. A judge has now granted her a review of the law and a statement from the authorities, clarifying the law, is to be made shortly.

Both such cases involve the individual asserting their right to choose the manner and time of their own death, and the law's right to intervene in their attempts to die with dignity.

I share my life with two dogs, who are now ageing, and the day will quite probably come, relatively, soon to make decisions about their quality of life. If they start to suffer a degenerative disease, or they are involved in an accident causing serious injury, I will be asked by a vet whether I wish to consider putting them to sleep, rather than have them suffer. I will have to balance their quality of life against the wish to continue to have them in my life, and I will have to judge whether their suffering has become too great to justify keeping them alive. Indeed, under the laws of this country, I would be failing in my obligations if I opted to prolong their lives, should they be judged to be suffering unduly.

This contrast in the human attitude to death is striking.

In dealing with human life, the presumption seems to be to preserve life at all cost, no matter the quality of that life. Dignity and compassion do not seem to come into the equation for many of the legal and religious authorities.With animals, we show compassion and attempt to allow them dignity, rather than drag out their medicated lives in pain and confusion.

Is it to much to ask that we find some mechanism for allowing humans the same consideration we give to animals?