Madam, – Dr Philip Nitschke has come all the way from Australia to tell us how to plan for our death and maintain control of our final destiny in these difficult times (Home News, March 20th). We mustn’t just drift into the great unknown, he declaims. As autonomous individuals we must assert control over our departure from this valley of tears, Nothing less will do in this “can do” age.
It all sounds very logical, coherent one might say. But is it? Are we quite as autonomous as Dr Nitschke would have us believe? Do we really control our destiny? Can one abstract oneself from the social and cultural networks in which we live and pass away? Are rights absolute? Arguably, not. Autonomy is not a synonym for control – it is at best a matter of degree and of circumstances.
We do depend on others and far from that dependence being shameful, it may often be reassuring for both patient and carer and a vital preparation for impending bereavement. Death is as much a psychological as it is a physical process, and surely the appropriate response is not to offer a stark choice between a go-go lifestyle and the stillness of the grave, between a life of suffering and the foreclosure of a premature death, but rather to support those whose suppressed cries for help may well be sharpened by the knowledge of their finitude.
There are therapeutic and palliative responses to euthanasia that lend dignity and meaning to death. We can adjust and we do adjust to ill health and a shortened life expectancy and surely the gravely ill should be helped to make that adjustment?
Dr Nitschke’s solution is too simple by half. Life and death are not polar opposites but rather a continuum of varying tonality. – Yours, etc,