Objections to Assisted Suicide

Requests for voluntary euthanasia are extremely rare in situations where the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of terminally ill patients are properly met. As the symptoms which prompt the request for euthanasia can be almost always managed with therapies currently available, our highest priority must be to ensure that top quality terminal care is readily available. While recognizing the importance of individual patient autonomy, history has clearly demonstrated that legalized euthanasia poses serious risks to society as a whole.

First of all, voluntary euthanasia is unnecessary because alternative treatments exist. It is widely believed that there are only two options open to patients with terminal illness: either they die slowly in unrelieved suffering or they receive euthanasia. In fact, there is a middle way, that of creative and compassionate caring. Meticulous research in palliative medicine has in recent years shown that virtually all unpleasant symptoms experienced in the process of terminal illness can be either relieved or substantially alleviated by techniques already available.

This has had its practical expression in the hospice movement, which has enabled patients' symptoms to be managed either at home or in the context of a caring in-patient facility. It is no surprise that in the Netherlands, where euthanasia is now accepted, there is only a very rudimentary hospice movement. By contrast, in the UK, which has well developed facilities to care specifically for the terminally ill, a House of Lords committee recently ruled that there should be no change in the law to allow euthanasia.[1] This is not to deny that there are many patients presently dying in homes and hospitals who are not benefiting from these advances. There are indeed many having suboptimal care. This is usually because facilities do not exist in the immediate area or because local medical practitioners lack the training and skills necessary to manage terminally ill patients properly. The solution to this is to make appropriate and effective care and training more widely available, not to give doctors the easy option of euthanasia. A law enabling euthanasia will undermine individual and corporate incentives for creative caring.

2. Requests for voluntary euthanasia are rarely free and voluntary. A patient with a terminal illness is vulnerable. He lacks the knowledge and skills to alleviate his own symptoms, and may well be suffering from fear about the future and anxiety about the effect his illness is having on others.