Doctors are Not Executioners
The AGE, 3 March, 1997
From Malcolm E. Drake
Dr Rodney Syme (202) has been quick to seize on the recent submissions of Dr Helga Kuhse and what is perceived as a widespread practice among some 30 per cent of the doctors surveyed to hasten the death of their patients.
I would like to draw attention to the weakness of Dr Kuhse’s submissions, which are obviously angled to justify euthanasia legally. She argues that when there is such a degree of practised euthanasia, clandestine or otherwise, which is not being prosecuted, why not allow euthanasia under the law?
One cannot argue that the law on speeding should be scrapped simply because many drivers who are speeding, are not being prosecuted.
Legalising euthanasia will undermine a basic tenet that runs through much of our law: to take due care. It will provide a loophole for those who should have known better and the indiscriminate to shift responsibility, by way of subtle inducement, to a weak, confused and very vulnerable patient. It provides a means by which it would be impossible to redress legally, the medical neglect or malpractice such a person may have suffered, or the undue economic pressures imposed.
When patients seek medical assistance it is because they seek a cure, not death. No one can really stop a person from taking their life themselves. Why should patients be allowed to insist as a matter of their rights, to the exclusion of the rights of others, that a doctor should take their life, and, in so doing, soil medical integrity? The role is more fitted to an appointed executioner. In a civilised society such an appointment, if ever, is only made after a court has duly considered, in every particular case, that justice is done, in every respect, in such killing.
Malcolm E. Drake, Beaumaris.