PAINFUL DEATH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22250, 26 October 1935, Page 13

PAINFUL DEATH

EIGHT TO AVOID NEW ENGLISH MOVEMENT FORMATION OF SOCIETY BILL TO PERMIT EASY END By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright (Received October 25, 5.5 p.m.) , LONDON. Oct. 24 Several medical men, barristers, churchmen and politicians, headed bv Lord Moynihan, formerly president of the Royal College of Surgeons, have launched a public society the aim of which is to legalise the right to die. The leaders include Sir Humphrey Rolleston, Physician Extraordinary to the King, Lord and Lady Denman, Sir Arbuthnot Lane, Mr. Julian Huxley, biologist, Dr. 11. J. Laski, professor of political science and Dr. J. M. Creed, professor of divinity. The society is named the Voluntary Euthanasia (Easy Death) Legalisation Society. It contends that individuals who have attained years of discretion and are suffering from disease which usually entails a slow and painful death should be allowed, if they comply with requisite conditions, to substitute a quick and painless death. Tho campaign aims at securing public support for an early hill before Parliament. This bill, as prepared, provides for the appointment of a referee who would consider a written application from a sufferer who would have to declare he had consulted his nearest relative and secured his doctor's undertaking to administer death. Seven days would have to elapse after the referee had consented, thus affording time for the patient to change his mind, or his nearest relative to appeal. A highly-contentious subject, and one which has been debated among medical authorities from time to time, has been raised by the movement for voluntary euthanasia, according to a leading Auckland doctor, who last evening summarised the general medical attitude toward the question. He said the subject had been discussed upon occasion, but there had been no definite pronouncement of medical opinion. The view which had been held was that the matter of voluntary euthanasia should not be left for a doctor, although there was a tendency to leave the decision to the doctor.

After all, the medical duty was merely to consider a disease, its ravages and its duration, and that duty did not by any means embrace sociological and ethical questions. The medical interest in such a subject was not the only one. It could be emphasised, for example, that a medical court of law would be a vastly different thing from the court of law based on existing principles. The treatment of criminals wotdd be entirely different. While there could be agreement with the ideas of advanced thinker?, they were beyond their time. Furthermore, they were a very small minority. Such a question touched the very roots of society, and it would be society as a whole which would be the ultimate judge of an ethical and sociological question.