Life, be not proud

With Netherlands becoming the first nation in the world to give parliamentary assent to legalising euthanasia, the human community is once again forced to confront an issue that challenges some of the most basic assumptions that it has held over millennia. Indeed, it undermines the view most religions uphold, that human life is a gift from God and therefore no human being has the right to end it. It was such thinking that prompted the Kerala High Court to dismiss the writ petition filed by two individuals seeking the right to end their lives some time ago. It is also for this reason that suicide continues to be regarded in many countries, including India, as an illegal act that invites punishment.

Even in a tolerant society like that existing in the Netherlands, where an estimated 2,565 mercy killings have taken place since 1996, there is strict discouragement of a casual attitude to euthanasia. The proposed law has several qualifications built into it. A doctor can assist in ending the life of a patient only if the patient is of sound mind, is fully aware of the implications of the act and is fully agreed with the procedure; if his/her condition is certified as incurable; and if his/her suffering is considered unbearable. In other words, it is only in the rarest of rare situations that a doctor can play God and willfully put an end to a life. This is one remove away from the argument of the US8217;s famous/notorious Jack Kervokian, who maintains that if doctors end a life without 8220;vicious intent8221;, they cannot be held guilty of murder 8212; a reasoning that did not seem to impress the American legal system going by the jail term extended to this single-minded pathologist who now goes by the unfortunateappellation of 8220;Doctor Death8221;. In fact, Oregon is the only state in the US which considers physician-assisted killings as legal; everywhere else action of the kind Dr Kervokian encourages is treated as murder, pure and simple.

What makes this a particularly complex issue is the fact that it concerns two absolutes 8212; Life and Death 8212; there are no in-betweens. While the term 8220;euthanasia8221; 8212; Greek for 8220;good death8221; 8212; implies that the act of mercy killing is for the ultimate welfare of the person seeking it, because the act itself is so irrevocable, it may in some cases be extremely difficult to judge whether, in the ultimate analysis, it was the right step. Did the patient have the slightest chance of recovery? Could there be, at a later stage, some breakthrough in medical treatment that may have allowed him or her to live a comfortable life? It also raises questions about the role of the medical practitioner in human society. Are doctors necessarily equipped to handle the right to give the executioner8217;s nod? In a situation where the relationship between the doctor and his patient is already so unequal and problematic, shouldn8217;t this right be more carefully regulated by society? After all, stories of impatient nurses and doctorsquietly snuffing out the lives of difficult patients are not just figments of the imagination. Certainly, it is important to debate euthanasia and its implications for human society. But legalising it is another matter altogether.