Life comes replete with its share of peaks and troughs, but the sad plight of a family in Dharavi who want to euthanise themselves, throws the subject of euthanasia to light. The family members have filed a petition in the supreme court to allow them to die on account of two of its members suffering from the incurable disease limb girdle muscular dystrophy and financial inadequacy. Even though India has not legalised euthanasia, requests for such abound, whether nationally or abroad. But let’s recap a little. How did the term euthanasia come into being? Where is it legal abroad?
Euthanasia: Its origins
A quick look-up of an encyclopedia will reveal that ‘euthanasia’ is a Greek term that literally means ‘assisted dying’. The assistance ends the life of a person or an animal in a painless or minimally painful way. Euthanasia is most often performed in a painless way, in order to end suffering. The controversy lays between two different perspectives; moral view of life versus the rational view of life. By itself, euthanasia as a topic is often highlycharged — emotionally, politically, and morally. Laws and meanings abroad change over time.
Types of euthanasia
(a) Indirect This includes the involvement of a physician, clinical nurse, pharmacist) as an agent who participates only by providing treatment for symptoms (for example pain) with a known side effect being an early death. This kind of assistance is currently legal in state of Oregon in the US. It became legal in 1997 as a result of the ‘Death with Dignity Act’ which was passed in the state in 1994.
(b) Direct Direct euthanasia means the involvement of a clinician as agent in inducing a patient’s death, like administering a lethal drug by injection. Direct euthanasia is not currently legal anywhere in the US, but both direct and indirect euthanasia are legal in Belgium, Colombia, Japan and the Netherlands.
(c) Voluntary Voluntary euthanasia occurs with the fully-informed request of a decisionally-competent adult patient or that of their surrogate (proxy).
(d) Non-voluntary Non-voluntary euthanasia occurs without the fully-informed consent and fully-informed request of a decisionally-competent adult patient or that of their surrogate (proxy). An example of this might be if a patient has decisional capacity but is not told they will be euthanised; or, if a patient is not conscious or lacks decisionalcapacity and their surrogate is not told the patient will be euthanised.
(e) Involuntary Involuntary euthanasia occurs over the objection of a patient or someone who can speak on the patient’s behalf. An example of this might be if a patient who can decide for himself/herself is told what will happen. The patient refuses, yet the patient is euthanised anyway.
Where is it legal?
Euthanasia is currently legal in parts of America and the Netherlands.
The case of Terri Schiavo
- A woman hailing from Florida, USA, Terri Schiavo’s case fuelled intense media attention and debate. In 1990, at the age of 26, she collapsed in her home and experienced respiratory and cardiac arrest. She remained in a coma for ten weeks.
- Within three years, she was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). In 1998, when it became legal to do so, Terri’s husband and guardian Michael Schiavo petitioned the courts to remove her gastric feeding tube; Terri’s parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, opposed this.
- The courts found that Terri was in a PVS and that she did not wish to be kept alive.
- By March 2005, the legal history around the Schiavo case included a complex web of motions, petitions, appeals and lawsuits. Finally, her feeding tube was removed a third and final time on March 18, 2005.
- She died on March 31, 2005, at the age of 41.
Championing the cause...
- Jack Kevorkian is a controversial American pathologist.
- He is most noted for publicly championing a terminal patient’s ‘right to die’ and for assisting several patients to that end, and is currently serving out a prison sentence for his practices.
- On March 26, 1999, Kevorkian was charged with seconddegree homicide and also for the delivery of a controlled substance by administering a lethal injection to Thomas Youk, a man suffering from a terminal nerve disease.
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