GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: The Economist hosts a debate on ‘assisted dying’

domingo, 26 de agosto de 2018

BioEdge: The Economist hosts a debate on ‘assisted dying’

BioEdge: The Economist hosts a debate on ‘assisted dying’

Bioedge

The Economist hosts a debate on ‘assisted dying’

by Michael Cook | 26 Aug 2018 |

The Economist, the world’s most respected news magazine, is a staunch supporter of legalising assisted suicide and euthanasia. But as part of its 175^thbirthday celebration, it opened its pages to a debate. Below are excerpts from a selection of participants.

Stephen Fletcher, a Canadian quadriplegic, Manitoba MP, and member of the Queen’s Privy Council in Canada. “In a liberal democracy we don’t try and dictate how people should live so why does society try to dictate how people should die? Dying with dignity is the greatest shift in morality in Canada in this generation.”

Emilie Yerby, a Guernsey politician. “If we are fallible in every other attempt to care for people through illness and the end of life, we will be fallible in our provision of assisted dying. We have no rational grounds to expect otherwise. And the consequences of our fallibility, however rare, can only be wrongful deaths.”

Dr Ellen Wiebe, a GP in Vancouver who has participated in over 150 assisted deaths since Canada legalised euthanasia in 2016. “And how do I feel when I provide an assisted death? Grateful to be a Canadian doctor in 2018 and have the ability to end the suffering of people dying of this array of horrible diseases.”

Charles Falconer, Britain’s Lord Chancellor from 2003 to 2007 and chair of the Commission on Assisted Dying. “It cannot be right that terminally ill people are denied choice based on the argument that the safeguards aren’t enough. The current law on assisted dying makes a mockery of due process, lacks popular support, is inhumane and fails to protect the vulnerable. It needs to change.”

Baroness Ilora Finlay, a crossbench peer in the House of Lords, professor of palliative medicine, and chair of Living and Dying Well. “We should not forget that laws are more than just regulatory instruments. They also send powerful social messages. An assisted dying law sends the subliminal message, however unintended by legislators, that if we are terminally ill taking our own lives is something we should consider. ... It is hardly surprising therefore that legalisation is inevitably followed by a continuing upsurge in such deaths.”

Kevin Yuill, historian at the University of Sunderland, in the UK. “I’m an atheist and a liberal. I support abortion rights. You might think that would make me supportive of assisted suicide ... We currently place equal moral weight on human life and do not measure it by years left or physical ability. Instituting assisted dying threatens that moral precept.”

Dr Peter Saunders, director of Care Not Killing. “Part of living in a free democratic society is that we recognise that personal autonomy is not absolute. And one of the primary roles of government and the courts is to protect the most vulnerable, even sometimes at the expense of not granting liberties to the desperate.”

Trista Carey, a Canadian lawyer. “A pro-choice person in every meaningful way, I have always fundamentally believed that we retain the inherent right to autonomy over our own bodies. Assisted death was a natural extension of those beliefs.”

Benoit Beuselinck, a medical oncologist at the University Hospital Leuven in Belgium. “It is my impression that those who often ask for euthanasia are suffering from depression. Is administering death the solution that our society proposes to loneliness and mental illness? ‘Death’ is now replacing ‘care’, and ‘autonomy’ replacing ‘solidarity’. As such, weaker patients can become victims of assisted dying.”

Sunday, August 26, 2018

The Norwegian bioethicist Ole Martin Moen has published an unusual but intriguing article in the journal Bioethics. He analyses the arguments in the half-mad manifesto of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. For those whose memories don’t stretch back that far, Kaczynski was a brilliant mathematician who became obsessed with the decay of American society. He retired to a backwoods cabin and worked as a serial postal bomber whose handiwork killed three people and maimed 23 between 1978 and 1995. The New York Times published his 35,000-word manifesto in 1995 which eventually led to his capture.

Moen says that Kaczynski’s concerns should be taken seriously and refuted philosophically, even if he is a terrorist. “Although philosophers can only play a modest role in fighting terrorism, it is striking that, today, the most obvious line of response to one’s adversaries—to listen carefully, to show that one has understood their position, and to explain why one believes they are mistaken—is hardly even attempted as a means to discourage terrorists.”

His words can usefully be applied to many other areas of public discourse today, not just dialogues with ideologically-motivated terrorists. It’s very seldom that opposing sides listen carefully to each other. In the Middle Ages, academic battles took the form of “disputation and debate”. Stating the other side’s argument in the strongest possible form was an essential part of the process – before demolishing it, of course. We need a bit more of this fairness, even for madmen like Kaczynski.