http://www.nationalreview.com/node/423253/print Is It Ethical to Affirm a Right to Die?
By George Will — August 29, 2015
San Diego — Brittany Maynard was soon to die. The question was whether she could do so on her own terms, as a last act of autonomy. Dr. Lynette Cederquist, who regrets that Maynard had to move to Oregon in order to do so, is working with others to change California law to allow physician assistance in dying.
Maynard, a 29-year-old newlywed, knew that her brain cancer would fill her final months with excruciating headaches, seizures, paralysis, loss of eyesight and the ability to speak. Radiation and chemotherapy would have purchased mere months. “I’m not killing myself,” she said. “Cancer is killing me.” She would not put her loved ones through her cancer’s depredations.
Advances in public health and medical capabilities for prolonging life — and dying — intensify interest in end-of-life issues. Reductions in heart disease and stroke have increased the number of people living to experience decrepitude’s encroachments, including dementia.
“Dementia,” Cederquist says, “is a whole different dilemma.” Assisted suicide perhaps should be allowed only when survival is estimated at six months or less, but at that time persons suffering dementia have lost decisional capacity.
RELATED: The Lethal Logic of Assisted Suicide
Physician-assisted dying has been done surreptitiously “as long as we have been practicing medicine,” says Cederquist, professor of internal medicine at the University of California, San Diego. Today, even in the 46 states without physician-assisted dying, doctors may legally offer “terminal sedation” — say, a life-shortening dose of morphine — when intense physical suffering cannot otherwise be satisfactorily alleviated. Some Catholic and other ethicists endorse a “double effect” standard: If the intent is to alleviate suffering but a consequence is death, the intent justifies the act.
Cederquist says the most common reason for requesting assistance in dying is not “intolerable physical suffering.” Rather, it is “existential suffering,” including “loss of meaning,” as from the ability to relate to others. The prospect of being “unable to interact” can be as intolerable as physical suffering, and cannot be alleviated by hospice or other palliative care.
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