Editorial: Death with dignity

Sydney
7 April 2002

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Editorial: Death with dignity

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Editorial: Death with dignity

As painful as it is to consider one's own death, everyone hopes that it will be as dignified and peaceful as possible. This issue of a dignified death has arisen in two different ways this week.

First there's the furore over the paralysed British woman who has secured a British High Court ruling that could see doctors ordered to shut off the ventilator she needs to stay alive. The unnamed woman, referred to as Miss B, 43, is a former social worker who suffered a ruptured blood vessel in her neck last year that left her unable to breathe unaided.

Pope John Paul II also raised the issue when he spoke out against the use of extreme measures to keep terminally ill people alive, suggesting that the use of medical technology to preserve a patient's life "at all costs" could be "useless and not fully respectful of the patient".

Patients were not simply sick bodies, but people with emotional and spiritual needs and concerns, he said, warning against what he called "exasperated therapeutic persistence" that was "not fully respectful" of terminally ill patients.

The Pope's comments and the British decision have been viewed by some as being pro-euthanasia. But Church leaders say the Pope's comments do not represent any change in Church doctrine, which is resolutely pro-life. So, too, the British case. The court ruling has been condemned by Vatican ethicists, but the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales says it simply confirms the legal and moral right of patients to refuse burdensome life-prolonging treatment.

The bishops' position is shared by a high-profile British anti-euthanasia group, the Medical Ethics Alliance, whose chairman, Dr Anthony Cole, said the judge had merely upheld the woman's right to refuse treatment.

The Pope and the British court are saying much the same thing. The court view, as the bishops put it, is that Miss B has the right to refuse burdensome life-prolonging treatment. The Pope calls such treatment "therapeutic persistence" in the face of terminal illness.

The Vatican's concern about euthanasia is very real. It views the unplugging of the ventilator as an "act of euthan asia" and argues that medical advances should be used to better manage patient's psychological as well as physical pain.

There is also concern that some of the motivation for euthanasia is to do with cost-cutting and avoiding the burden of caring for those who are suffering, as discussed in Bill poses real threat to 'right to live' (CW 17/3), an article about the Rights of the Terminally Ill Bill 2001, which has since been rejected by the NSW Legislative Council.