EUTHANASIA

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12315, 9 December 1925, Page 4

EUTHANASIA

, WHEN HUMAN BEINGS SUFFER SHOULD WE HASTEN DEATH ? WHERE KILLING IS MURDER There lay slowly dying in an agony which, even the merciful morphia needle could not wholly alleviate, a little mite of a child. “Oh, doctor!” said the nurse, wrung to the point of hysteria with the pity of it all, henself tortured! with witnessing tho torture of the child; “could you not give her an overdose and let her go—you know she will linger for days like this?” , ‘‘Woman,’’ said the doctor, turning fiercely upon her. “Woman, are you mad ? Have I the power of life and death?” The doctor,- too, was overwrought with the suffering of his little patient, whom no skill could now avail; and his misery was accentuated by the’ knowledge, that, as the nurse J.iad 6aid, the child might linger for days. Yet he could do nothing, excepting to try and alleviate the little one’s agony, with just sufficient morphia to “dope” her—but not enough to mercifully end her torture. That, - in the eyes of tho law, would be murder. It is laid down that Nature must take her course, however cruel, and at whatever cost of human suffering. THE “HAPPY DISPATCH” Among some savage tribes, in older days, at leaht, it was tho custom to give the "happy dispatch” to the suffering, and to the ,aged who would interfere with the activity of the tribe, often engaged- in warfare, in rapid marching, or flight. Australian aborigines on the march would abandon, to die or to recover as fate ordained, any who fell ill by the way, without any idea of ending their suffering with the club or spear. But they were savogee who could ill comprehend suffering, and who, when they rarely fell ill, would generally die ns the result of complete surrender to death. But in many other countries, savage races would not only refuse aid to the sick, but would club them to death, and also put the old folk out of the way, and deal similarly with an overplus of babies-. To ..come to our own civilisation. “Euthanasia;” or the painless putting to death of sufferers who have no hope of recovery, has frequently been advocated on humanitarian grounds—and it has on rare occasions that we know of, been put into practice, sometimes with dire results to the person who has yielded to the pleadings 'of tho sufferer. Men have been imprisoned, and even gone to the gallows for eiercising this form of humanitarianism.

AN AMERICAN CASE The most recent case of euthanasia to came under notice—and one must conclude that it was skilfully executed, seeing that the practitioner was a medical man—is that cabled from America. This was the pathetic affair of Dr. Harold Elmer Blazer, an aged physician, who killed his imbecile daughter, aged 34, last summer. American newspapers had devoted considerable space to the controversy which ensued, as to whether “murder for love” should be added to the list of “convenient crimes” committed under the general heading of “the unwritten law”—which law .is very considerably stretched in the land of the Stars and Stripes. Lawyers for the -defence urged that the crime of Blazey (if it was a orime other than in law) was dictated by a father’s lovei and natural desire to bring peace to a suffering child. “A human husk’’ was how they described the dead woman, in their attempt to justify the killing as “a merieful murder” committee by a parent out of love and humanity. In this case the jury failed to agree, so that there is yet no final answer in America to the appeal to justify euthanasia. FATHER AND SON r Coming nearer home, there was the recent case in Sydney,'- in which a son. yielding to the continued imploratione of a suffering father, supplied him with a revolver, and the father ended his own sufferings It was proved that there had been a particularly strong affection between father and son, and for this reason doubtless the jury was influenced, whilst bringing in the. unavoidable verdict of murder, in compliance with British law, to add a rider recommending that the youth be set at liberty. This rider was complied with, the “murderer” being admitted to probation. Of course this was an extraordinary case, and cannot be regarded as forming a precedent. Emulation of this- offender’s action, even under the most excusable circumstances, would be highly dangerous. THE MEDICAL ATTITUDE

The attitude ,of the medical profession on this matter is well summarised in the answer of the doctor to the nurse in the case of the suffering child:— “Have I the power of life and death?" It is a power that no medical man is willing to assume, even though he knows that the death,of his patient is in the natural course inevitable. The suggestion is mode that in cases which seem suitable for the application of euthanasia —where days, weeks, or even months of suffering must accompany the lingering of life—there should he consultation of, say, three doctors, and that if their verdict is that life could only he prolonged at the, cost .of suffering to the patient and misery to others, without any hope whatever of the patient’s recovery, then the final act of medicine should be performed;

But medical opinion is that it would bo very hard to get three doctors to take upon themselves the ordering of death. There is in them the inherent fear of taking human life, even though that life he already doomed. And,,it is argued 1 , even three doctors might ©rr in some cases, for patients have been known to recover from the most prolonged and agonising illnesses, after ail hope had been abandoned. These may be "miracles,” but many such exist. The problem of euthanasia is no easy one to solve.