Assisted Dying - A Perspective

SmokingCaterpillar  November 27 2024 06:00:00 AM

I guess one problem with dying is that we're increasingly divorced from death and its processes.. Now the Victorians were much closer to the realities of death than we are. Funny, that, because we sometimes think of them as prudish and emotionally repressed.

In this picture below  (from the BBC), the child on the left has died. But this is a family porttrait. This may seem ghoulish to our modern 21st century attitudes. But I think it's reasonable because in those times, many families had large numbers of children and many would die before their fifth birthday from diseases that are easily and effectively treated today.


I'm uneasy about one cohort of the population's attitude to assisted dying. That cohort says that assisted dying is unacceptable in any shape or form. While i respect yje holding of the opinion, I feel that I cannot agree with that position.

We know that palliative care is pretty good nowadays. When giving someone palliative care, there's an acceptance that there is no longer a reasonable prospect of curing someone of the condition that is killing them. We also assume (sometimes incorrectly) that palliative care is always effective in terms of pain relief.

But, here's the thing. I would assume that a person who believes that assisted dying is unacceptable will have considered the future possibility that they might have to look after a loved one who suffers from a painful life-threatening incurable condition.

It's reasonable that they might be unwilling to either assist their loved one to die or enlist the aid of a third party to assist. But their insistence that their attitude should extend to their idea that no form of assisted dying is acceptable at all seems to be morally weak. Because morality, surely, is about how you deal with other people.

Here's my thinking (for what it's worth)  on the matter. Most of the time, we have a moral duty to be kind to people in need. This is a thread that runs through most moral codes, including religion. Surely alleviating suffering is mostly an act of kindness. If I have a loved one who is dying in a painful and distressing manner, how is it immoral to assist them in their final hours of their existence? Palliative care is available, of course, but its imperfections are often glossed over.

I want neither myself nor my loved ones to have to go through any of the experiences recounted in this publication. To me, there's a test by which I can solidify my attitude to assisted dying. I Imagine a loved one in the late stages of a disease such as bowel cancer. This can be extremely painful, undignified l and distressing, as we know. It is by no means uncommon for people with this condition to ask for assistance in ending their suffering. If you were in the position of being asked, why would you not want to help that person who so desperately needs it? If I helped them, I might feel bad. But not helping them would be much, much worse. Because I would always know that I failed them and my failure resulted in needless suffering.

Here's something that I found useful in helping to form my attitudes to assisted dying. Yes. It has several anecdotal pieces. While normally I would be dismissive of anecdotal evidence, here I felt differently. As I said at the beginning of this short essay,



Surely, when I come to the end of my life. It's all over. A few minutes, hours, days or weeks plus or minus  really make no difference in the grand scheme of things. A tiny part of the universe is being rearranged. The atoms and molecules that make up the person known as me continue for eternity as far as we know. They will become part of someone or something else. Amusingly, by all accounts, I may well have a few atoms from Julius Caesar. Life is not sacred. It is a natural and normal progression of biological processes. There's nothing divine or mystical about it that I can see. Being alive is truly amazing especially as I seem to be conscious at a time when the universe itself is beginning to understand itself.

'Nuf said...

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