Only
Humans Should Suffer:
The End-of-Life Double Standard
By Mary Shaw
01 February, 2007
Countercurrents.org
On
Monday, here in Philadelphia, Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro was euthanized
after an eight-month battle with complications from a leg injury he
had suffered at the Preakness.
Philadelphia mourns. And
apparently the world mourns, too, as the news of this beloved horse's
death has reached newspapers and TV sets around the nation and beyond.
With his Kentucky Derby win,
Barbaro became no less a Philly sports hero than Eagle Donovan McNabb.
But there's one big difference: If a football player (or your uncle
Joe) were to suffer a terminal injury that left him dying a slow death
in constant excruciating pain that even modern medicine could not control,
he would just have to suffer.
As of this writing, Oregon
is the only state in the U.S. that allows physician-assisted suicide
for terminally ill patients in pain who want to die with dignity on
their own terms. Efforts to pass similar legislation in other states
have failed, due in no small part to challenges by those who confuse
a "culture of life" with a culture of forced suffering.
In reality, despite concerns
by opponents of the Oregon law who feared that it would lead to a widespread
rush to die, only 246 terminally ill patients used the law to end their
lives from the time the law was implemented in 1998 through the end
of 2005. That's an average of about one in 1,000 deaths in that state
during that timeframe. These patients found a quick, painless, and certain
end to their intolerable suffering, and were spared weeks or months
of agony. And their families were spared the anguish of watching their
loved ones suffer a painful and prolonged death.
In addition to Oregon, physician-assisted
suicide is currently legal in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Switzerland.
Everywhere else, the terminally ill are forced to endure sometimes horrific
pain at the end of life, or end their misery with a plastic bag, a noose,
or some other undignified means. And those sad, desperate acts will
continue as long as so-called "pro-life" factions keep fighting
attempts to widen the acceptance of physician-assisted suicide and provide
more people with the power to choose a comfortable death over a horrible,
lingering, painful one.
What it boils down to is
this: While life is precious and should not be thrown away lightly,
modern medical science cannot yet provide adequate pain control in all
dying patients, even in the best hospices.
While physicians do take
an oath to "do no harm", is it not harmful to force a dying
patient to suffer a slow, lingering death against his or her will, perhaps
kept alive artificially with respirators and feeding tubes?
When a pet (or a racehorse)
becomes ill to the point where it is near death or suffering uncontrollably,
a veterinarian will not think twice before recommending that the animal
be euthanized, to put it out of its misery. In our society, this is
regarded as the kind thing to do.
So why do we treat our dying
animals with more mercy than we give our dying people?
Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist.
She currently serves as Philadelphia Area Coordinator for Amnesty International,
and her views on politics, human rights, and social justice issues have
appeared in numerous online forums and in newspapers and magazines worldwide.
Note that the ideas expressed in this article are the author's own,
and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amnesty or any other
organization with which she may be associated. E-mail [email protected].
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