Dying to Die, thank you Mr. Doctor

After J. K. Rowling, the author of Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett is probably England's most successful writer of children's stories, though his are a bit more complex and informed, especially in science and history, than Ms. Rowlings enjoyable romps. In "Terry Pratchett ready to be test case for suicide law", the BBC News reports that Pratchett wants to put the law on trial when it comes time for him to die (2010).

Pratchett has Alzheimer's disease, which means that his brain, and therefore both his mind and his personhood, will be destroyed before he dies, leaving him a mindless vegetable. He hates this idea, and is determined to die at a time and place of his choosing, in the company of his family and other loved ones, when he still knows who he is and who they are. He is also certain that his doctors are the best people to assist him to die in this way, and that it is a proper part of their job, a final service that he should be legally able to ask his doctors to perform for him to avoid a fate worse than death.

As Sir Terry (Queen Elizabeth the 2nd has bestowed a knighthood on him), says:

"It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room," ("God's waiting room" ¶ 9)

In a slightly different but related case, the same article also relates the story of Kay Gilderdale, who was acquitted of attempted murder charges a few days ago after admitting that she had respected the wishes of and helped her seriously ill daughter, Lynn, to die in December 2008. Her daughters illness was not terminal, but was debilitating and there was no doubt that in assisting her suicide Ms Gilderdale was respecting her daughter's wish to die.

For the Gilderdale's, it would have been much easier had their family doctors been allowed to assist with Lynn's suicide as competent healers, rather than forcing the mother and daughter to act alone.

As you have probably inferred, I agree with Sir Terry that it really is a part of the doctors role as healer to also give us control over when and how we die, especially, but not only, in the case of a dehumanising terminal illness. Sadly, too few countries allow the healthy legal means to this end, preferring for bad (I mean immoral) reasons to deny their citizens the legal right to choose when and how to die with dignity as human beings.

But if you disagree with Sir Terry and me, please feel free to argue your case.

You have probably also noticed that I've used a definition of person that would, at least until some point well after conception, entail that abortion is not murder. And now that I think about it, that and similar definitions of what it is to be a human person must also have as a consequence that killing someone in the final stages of, let us say, Alzheimer's would not be, could not, be murder. (And I just added the adjective human to specifically rule out of this post the class of non-human persons: there are already enough definitive issues here without getting into the question of whether or not it would be murder to kill a non-human person. But with the rapid advance of technology, I don't think it will be long before the law will have to grapple with that issues: if you kill a machine that thinks, feels and has a sense of itself as a distinct entity, have you committed murder or just turned off a switch?)

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References

Terry Pratchett ready to be test case for suicide law. (2010, January 31). BBC News. Retrieved February 1, 2010 from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8490062.stm