GESTIÓN EN SALUD PÚBLICA: BioEdge: Is fear of being a burden a good reason for assisted suicide?

domingo, 10 de septiembre de 2017

BioEdge: Is fear of being a burden a good reason for assisted suicide?

BioEdge: Is fear of being a burden a good reason for assisted suicide?

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Bioedge

Is fear of being a burden a good reason for assisted suicide?

by Michael Cook | 9 Sep 2017 | 2 comments

In Oregon, 48.9% of patients who ended their lives under the state’s assisted suicide act said that fear of being a burden was one of their reasons. We should be very worried by this, argues Charles Foster, a British medical ethicist, in the blog Practical Ethics.

Concern about being a burden should not be a criterion justifying assisted dying. That ‘being a burden’ is in the minds of so many patients at the end of life is a depressing index of the breakdown of familial obligations and expectations in the western world. It would have been unthinkable in most cultures and at most historical times. It is an artefact of an atomistic view of the self which is biological gibberish and sociological poison. We are not islands. We were all dependent as foetuses and children, and are dependent now on other road-users, pilots, doctors, genes, and the weather. No system of law or ethics that relies on a caricature of basic realities is likely to produce good results.

Foster goes on to argue that “The law should be framed in such a way as to encourage the attitudes in families and carers that make impossible the feeling ‘I’m a burden’.”

He points out that shuffling off the mortal coil for the sake of the family might seem commendably altruistic – a bit like Oates telling his comrades on Scott’s ill-starred expedition to the South Pole, “I am just going outside and may be some time”. But, says Foster, “This is a bad argument. It sets the distress of a few above the welfare of many, and above the ethical health of a society.”

He concludes with the thought that this might undermine the case for assisted suicide altogether:

And one might think, given the very high incidence of this reason in the reports of patients’ reasons for seeking assisted dying, and the possibility that it is a contributory factor in the minds of those patients who cite other primary reasons for seeking death, that this consideration is an argument against assisted dying per se.

Saturday, September 9, 2017

Planned Parenthood is an organisation which inspires both love and loathing. One of its admirers is the Lasker Foundation, which has just presented it with the Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award for services to reproductive health.

Since many Laskers have gone on to win Nobels, PP is suddenly on the starting blocks for a Nobel Peace Prize. If it were only for its success in promoting contraception and abortion, it might be too controversial even for the Norwegian Nobel Committee. However, as a one-fingered salute to President Donald Trump, who has promised to defund PP, it could prove nearly irresistible. Read all about it below.

On a completely different topic, if you happen to live in Melbourne and are free on Thursday evening, there will be a launch of my book, The Great Human Dignity Heist, in Carlton. The details are on our Facebook page. It would be great to meet lots of BioEdge readers there.

Cheers,