euthanasia

activists -- especially students -- are drawn to anything caught between a rock and a hard place. how could one not be moved to act when healthcare and pharmaceutical costs are now so high that senior citizens are forced to choose between food and medicine?

and so we join, in throngs, the battle against evil healthcare corporations.

alas, we are all too quick to blame industry and the spectre of capitalism for driving costs through the roof and robbing us of our “right” to healthcare. for few who point to the aforementioned hobson’s choice seem to have considered the fact that thirty years ago, this decision was not so difficult for our octogenarians: they ate their food, and they died.

we didn’t even have a treatment for parkinson’s, much less a bevy of erectile dysfunction medication, until within the last decade.

what has changed between then and now is not that healthcare costs so much today, it is that we now have the ability to purchase, and thus spend, so much more on curing our various ailments. high prices are simply a byproduct of dedicating to medicine an amount of resources unparalleled in history.

this notion rarely elicits a meaningful reply. the typical, bewildered response is to ask how we could possibly question our legal and ethical obligations to care for our own. unwavering proponents of natural rights declare that the value of human life transcends all other considerations and unites americans with even a shred of moral fabric, left and right, blue- and red-state.

besides the question of our practical abilities, do-gooders have overlooked what is really at stake in this controversy over physician-assisted suicide: our freedom to choose.

we have yet to come to an understanding as to precisely what sort of life we seek to protect, so doctors are stuck in the default position of being ethically bound to protect all life. in doing so, we force our society to spend exorbitant amounts of money prolonging the part of life that many find the least fulfilling.

these obligations have led us to some quite irrational legal results. a physician may withhold “heroic” measures if they are already being administered, but cannot otherwise bring life to an end. any act that brings peace is deemed criminal unless the life is wholly dependent upon medical wizardry.

now, there is good reason to prohibit assisted suicide in certain problematic situations, but the existing distinction turns solely on the physician’s actions and utterly ignores the patient’s needs and desires.

meanwhile, we hinder any and all actions that might shorten one’s life but bring greater overall happiness (except alcohol, the boorish drug for the boorish nation).

some of this obstruction is accounted for by what i would call “torts of regret” -- lawsuits that blame others for deliberate tradeoffs made earlier in one’s life. (“surgeon general? never heard of him. *cough* *hack*”) but these efforts should not surprise us, given our society’s unhealthy fixation on benchmarks, be they stock prices, income, or our average life expectancy.

the baby boom is retiring, and laws designed to protect life are set to become manacles on our generation. social security and medicare/medicaid reform will not be enough. what we need, in order to free our future generations from a crushing burden, is to establish the individual right to terminate his or her own life.

of course, many will see this as an impossible proposition, one that debases life.

but might we not also see it as a tribute? our forefathers risked, and many sacrificed, their lives so that we could live – and die – in peace.

perhaps, instead of forcing our doctors’ blind adherence to the hippocratic oath, we should allow individuals to improve their quality of life as seen fit. for some people, this will mean bringing it to a peaceful and deliberate conclusion.

my father likes to quote garrison keillor, who might have said it best:

“the death of an old man is not a tragedy.”