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Imagine, as you are living your happy, healthy life, you find out you have been diagnosed with a disease and soon become terminally ill. You are told that for the rest of your life you cannot walk, let alone move, and you find it hard to communicate with your family and friends. You need to be fed through a tube, and you find it difficult to breathe, therefore must wear a ventilator 20 hours a day, and if you stop wearing the ventilator, you only have weeks to live. In the hardest battle of your life to survive, you should be allowed to choose to give up if you do not wish to die in suffering. The right to die should be a matter of personal choice, and if incapable of suicide, you should have the right to be assisted in your own death.
Diane Pretty was a former patient of mine, diagnosed with motor neuron disease (MND), which is the name given to a group of diseases in which these neurons fail to work normally. Muscles then gradually weaken and waste, as neurons degenerate and die. After 2 years of battling the disease, Diane decided to stop artificial ventilation, knowing what the future held if she decided to do so. Her only wish was to die without suffering, in the comfort of her own home, with her friends and family. But due to the nature of her illness, she was physically incapable to do so. Therefore, to fulfil her wishes she would have needed assistance. Which is illegal in most countries, Diane spent her last few months fighting legal issues in court, but being unsuccessful as she passed away in hospital.
Throughout my medical career, I’ve had many patients ask me to help hasten their death. While a few have moved in their final months to places where assisted suicide is legal, most could not relocate. “It is not up to doctors to decide what my suffering is”, Diane and many patients told me, as Diane chose palliative care whilst in her final years, wishing she had the choice to end her own life in the final months despite excellent palliative care and hospice care. As a doctor, I was deeply affected by every patient’s request I have come across. But I understand why my patients wanted to end their life, they want to die in dignity, not pain. It should be their choice to decide when and where to die, but the Euthanasia Laws Act 1997 state that euthanasia is illegal in all states and territories in Australia and may result in a person being charged with murder, manslaughter or assisting suicide.
To deny a person’s wish to die with dignity also denies them their personal autonomy and is an act that is trespassing on someone’s humanity. Euthanasia should be available as an option to people, especially for people who are terminally ill. Many anti-euthanasia proponents believe that euthanasia is immoral as life should be preserved and protected, but in my opinion, it is immoral to demand of another person to continue living a life of suffering and to remove the right for someone to choose when to die.
They say that our bodies are our own, and we should be allowed to do what we want with them. So, it's wrong to make anyone live longer than they want. In fact, making people continue living when they don't want to is violating their human rights and freedom. Euthanasia doesn’t technically affect others, it’s not their body, it simply is not their choice. But seeing your loved ones dying a slow and painful death, with nothing you can do to help them, now this will affect us.
The Times (24 January 2007) stated that, according to the 2007 British Social Attitudes Survey, 80% of the public said they wanted the law changed to give terminally ill patients the right to die with a doctor's help. If 80% of the public want this law to be changed, what is stopping it? Because euthanasia is immoral and inhumane? I hope to always provide compassionate care for each of our dying patients so they can end the last chapter of their lives without suffering, they’re choice should be they’re choice. Everyone has a right to a good death, therefore, a good death must not be denied to those who want one.
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