On an average of six times a day, a
doctor in Holland practices "active" euthanasia: intentionally administering a
lethal drug to a terminally ill patient who has asked to be relieved of
suffering. Twenty times a day, life-prolonging treatment is withheld or
withdrawn when there is no hope that it can effect an ultimate cure. "Active"
euthanasia remains a crime on the Dutch statute books punishable by 12 years in
prison. But a series of court cases over the past 15 years has made it clear
that a competent physician who carries it out will not be prosecuted.
Euthanasia, often called "mercy killing", is a crime everywhere in Western
Europe. But more and more doctors and nurses in Britain, West Germany, Holland
and elsewhere readily admit to practicing it, most often in the "passive" form
of withholding or withdrawing treatment. The long simmering euthanasia issue has
lately boiled over into a sometimes fierce public debate, with both sides
claiming the mantle of ultimate righteousness. Those opposed to the
practice see themselves up-holding sacred principles of respect for life, while
those in favor raise the banner of humane treatment. After years on the
defensive, the advocates now seem to be gaining ground. Recent polls in Britain
show that 72 percent of British subjects favor euthanasia in some circumstances.
An astonishing 76 percent of respondents to a poll taken late last year in
France said they would like the law changed to decriminalize mercy
killings.
Reasons for the latest surge of interest in euthanasia
are not hard to find. Europeans, like Americans, are now living longer. The
average European male now lives to the age of 72, women to almost 80. As Derek
Humphrey, a leading British advocate of "rational euthanasia" says, "lingering
chronic diseases have replaced critical illnesses as the primary cause of
death."
And so the euthanasists have begun to press their case
with greater force. They argue that every human being should have the right to
"die with dignity", by which they usually mean the right to escape the horrors
of a painful or degrading hospitalization. Most advocates of voluntary
euthanasia has argued that the right to die should be accorded only to the
terminally and incurably ill, but the movement also includes a small minority
who believe in euthanasia for anyone who rationally decides to take his own
life.
That right is unlikely to get legal recognition any time
in the near future. Even in the Netherlands, the proposals now before Parliament
would restrict euthanasia to a small number of cases and would surround even
those with elaborate safeguards. |
