A Duty Too Far?

One of the most difficult topics ever broached is the "end of life" question, which has recently been projected back into the headlines by Dame Mary Warnock with her perhaps ill-judged comment that dementia sufferers ought to be assisted to commit suicide.

It is unfortunate but not surprising that comment has focused around the phrases with the most shock value, effectively preventing a balanced debate on what is a delicate ethical question.

"Right to life" and "Right to die" advocates are equally passionate, and both cases have merit. It is hard to argue the case against assisting somebody with an incurable degenerative disease to have a painless and dignified death at a time of their choosing, rather than forcing them to suffer weeks, months or years of pain and dependence while their disease runs its course. Yet at the same time, every human life has a value, and nobody except the person living that life can/should be able to decide whether or not it is worth living. It is very easy to see that the possibility of being assisted to die could metamorphose into the duty to take this route.

Society is excellent at being judgmental. Consider how smoking cigarettes has moved from normal, mainstream behaviour, to being discouraged, to being outlawed except in the privacy of the home. Now anyone brazen enough to continue enjoying a smoke is made to feel like a pariah. The same is beginning to happen with diet. Food packaging regales us with details of fat, calories, salt, and every advertisement urges us to take more exercise and stop eating so much of the fun stuff. I fully expect to wake up one day and find that the government has decided to ban chips, or put a 'health tax' on the price of a cream cake. And the propaganda is working. Everybody now knows that they should be eating a lot more fruit and vegetables, far fewer biccies - and we are beginning to look askance at those who don't follow the rules. One of my oldest friends - very fit and slim - actually apologised for taking sugar in her coffee; an automatic defence, she told me, because so many people take the opportunity of voicing their disapproval when she asks for the sugar bowl.

Now imagine that we manage to pass legislation allowing us the right to die. Initially, of course, we will be ultra-cautious. Individuals who want to pursue this right will no doubt have to jump through many hoops to demonstrate the hopelessness of their position and their fixed determination to end their life. Then gradually, as we become more at ease with the idea that mortality can be quite easily controlled - and as society strains to cope with the needs of many more elderly people - there will be a shift towards perceiving euthanasia first as a sensible decision for anyone with poor quality of life, then as a positively good way of easing the burden of caring for the frail, confused and disabled.

We may then find ourselves casting the same look of disapproval at an elderly citizen inching their painful way along with their walking frame, as we now do when we see a huddled smoker in an office doorway, or a fat shopper with a trolley full of carbohydrates.

Although I started by believing myself to be in favour of the right to assisted suicide, I find that I have now come full circle. The risk of abuse is just too great, and I for one would not care to live in a society where a single person was made to feel that they had a duty to die, for the greater benefit of the state.