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Bishop warns: euthanasia thinking can ‘spread like wildfire’
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| By Damir Govorcin
10 October, 2010 |
It is alarming how euthanasia thinking can spread virally, not just between people but also within the conscience of a person, says Bishop Anthony Fisher OP, Bishop of Parramatta.
“We begin by thinking that just a little bit of medical killing might be OK – for people in extreme pain who are terminally ill, for instance,” he said.
“We then extend it to people who are very sick, but not terminally ill. Then to people who aren’t really sick, but are ‘tired of life’. Then to people (first children, the disabled and the unconscious) who haven’t even asked for euthanasia.”
The Australian newspaper reported one in three GPs in major cities believe people older than 70 who feel “tired of life” should have the right to professional help in ending it, according to a poll conducted for Dr Philip Nitschke's Exit International.
More than 33 per cent of 500 doctors surveyed in Sydney (35 per cent), Melbourne (36 per cent) and Adelaide (43 per cent) are said to have agreed with the provocative question. In Perth, 28 per cent endorsed it.
When doctors in the survey were asked whether they wanted legislative reform to allow euthanasia for the terminally ill, more than one in two GPs in the four capital cities agreed.
Bishop Fisher said medicalised killing isn’t just intrinsically wrong and contrary to all sound medical ethics.
“As the recent survey shows, the very idea of it also spreads like wildfire once you’ve agreed to it in ‘just for a few hard cases’,” he said.
“Even if the recent survey was poorly worded and answered by people unaware of how their answers might be used, it is a salutary lesson.
“Once we allow that our doctors might decide that some people are better off dead and that they might bring that about; once we admit that our patients might decide that they’ve ‘had enough’ and can ask their healthcarers to hurry up their deaths; then we are already well down a path to death as a solution to a growing range of problems.”
Bishop Fisher concluded: “I am not surprised Dr Nitschke is reportedly so open to medicalised killing as part of baby boomers taking control. The euthanasia idea is so very corrupting.”
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