APOLOGIA
By Hendrik van der Breggen
The Carillon, March 3, 2016
Physician-assisted
killing
If you think physician-assisted killing is
wrong, it's time to oppose it.
Yes, the Supreme Court of Canada calls it
"physician-assisted dying." But this is a euphemism,
a nice way of describing what is in fact not nice (like "going to the
washroom" is a nice way of saying "going to take a piss").
Physician-assisted dying suggests comfort care at the end of life, but in
actuality refers to doctors directly killing patients.
Yes, it's good for objecting doctors to insist
on conscience provisions, i.e., insist that if a doctor thinks physician-assisted
killing is wrong, then he/she shouldn't have to do it or make referrals to
others who will.
But this is not enough. Think about it. If you think
killing patients is truly wrong, as,
say, slavery is truly wrong, then it's not enough not to be required to own
slaves or not to have to refer slave-buyers to slave sellers. We must object
that slavery itself is wrong, period, and wrong for all.
Perhaps objecting doctors may only be required
to provide accurate information about physician-assisted killing. If so, keep
in mind that although it may not be wrong to be required to provide accurate
information about slavery, it would be wrong if this information included
directions about where to purchase a slave.
Manitoba's College of Physicians and Surgeons
might object (as they do) that "Physicians must not impose their moral or religious
beliefs about physician assisted dying on patients." But isn't the college
(and Canada's Supreme Court) imposing the moral belief that life is no longer
the default position and so the patient must choose to live or be killed
(patients already have the choice to say no to extraordinary and burdensome
treatments that merely prolong dying) and so doctors must ensure (by referral
or providing accurate information/ directions) that somebody kills them?
Intellectual health warning: Somebody is having
their philosophical cake and eating it too!
I am troubled. I believe we have not learned our
philosophical lessons from history.
Consider the following passage from Dr. Leo
Alexander (1905-1985), medical advisor to the U.S. Chief of Counsel at the
Nuremberg Trials, trials in which Nazis were convicted of crimes against humanity
(this passage is from Alexander's paper "Medical Science Under
Dictatorship," The New England Journal
of Medicine, 241:2, July 14, 1949):
"Whatever proportions these crimes finally
assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started
from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in
emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the
acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is
such a thing as life not worthy to be lived."
Dr. Alexander continues: "This attitude in
its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically
sick. Gradually the sphere of those to be included in the category was enlarged
to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the
racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize
that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which this entire trend of mind
received its impetus was the attitude toward the nonrehabilitatable sick."
I don't believe that there is a Nazi Party on
Canada's horizon (thank goodness). But I do believe that some of the deep
philosophical principles of what Pope John Paul II (1920-2005) called the
Culture of Death are becoming prevalent in our society.
Surely we should instead encourage a culture of
life wherein palliative care (which can manage physical pain 90-95% of the
time) and social supports (for the sufferers and their care-givers) are better funded
and more accessible across Canada.
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing," is a wise saying attributed to Edmund
Bourke and others.
For goodness' sake, then, we must resist the
culture of death and insist that medical, social, and psychological problems
require medical, social, and psychological solutions—not physician-assisted killing.
Hendrik
van der Breggen, PhD, teaches philosophy at Providence University College.
Further reading:
- Apologia: Physician-assisted suicide
- Wesley J. Smith, "Canada declares war on Christian doctors and nurses", First Things, March 4, 2016.
- Douglas Farrow, "Canadian Culture of Death: An open letter", First Things, March 3, 2016. (Be sure to read the PDF.)
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