MedBlogs

21 Mar 11
7:17 PM

There is no 'right to die'. International human rights law protects the living and forbids arbitrary deprivation of life. Facilitation of medicalized killing or self-harm in response to suicidal ideation is in violation of the fundamental human rights principle of inalienability. Human beings cannot be deprived of the substance of their rights, not in any circumstances, not even at their own request. Human rights are applicable to the living. For as long as the terminally ill are alive, each life is to be protected by law against medicalized killing or self-harm. Even at the request of the suicidally distressed, proactive medicalized killing is always a bridge too far. Once the medical profession crosses that Rubicon, the most vulnerable amongst us, the very old, the very disabled, the most burdensome and those without a voice must fear for their lives. To remain alive they will need to furnish adequate rational justification for 'choosing' to remain alive. And it then damages the original, irreplaceable universal agreement that to be alive requires no justification--that it is sufficient simply that one is alive. The dying patient's basic human right to faithful, unstinting care must not be watered down to a mere 'choice'. In this substitution of a choice for a human right, the euthanasia enthusiasts will cheat us all of something that for centuries we had been able to take for granted--the right not to be pressured to hasten our own death—to live our lives to the natural end. Regrettably, many profess a touching faith in the unimpeachable ethics of the medical profession to whom they will entrust their termination. Having researched for some years now the history of the medical profession in Germany 1933-45, I remain a confirmed sceptic when it comes to entrusting to doctors an absolute power to perform medicalized killing. It is imperative that the medical profession continues to improve palliative care. Medical research and health care resources must not be diverted into ktenology (the science of killing). This term was coined by Dr Leo Alexander, who testified for the prosecution at the Nuremberg Trials involving the crimes of the medical profession. Dr Alexander observed what was well publicized at the time, viz., that a large part of Nazi research 'was devoted to the science of destroying and preventing life'. Writing in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1947, Dr Alexander noted the fragility of medical ethics, that the fall of the medical profession started with a 'subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians…the acceptance of the attitude...that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived' and then moved gradually from 'the severely and chronically sick' to encompass 'the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted...'