THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1935. EUTHANASIA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22719, 4 November 1935, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES MONDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1935. EUTHANASIA

An occurrence in England, reported in our cable news this morning, illustrates one of the dangers against which it will be necessary to create safeguards if the principle of euthanasia is ever accepted. Gross abuses would arise if the right, which the Voluntary Euthanasia Society claims, to take life in certain circumstances were not hedged about by strict safeguards. This is, however, fully recognised by those who arc at the present time preparing a Bill for submission in the Parliament of the United Kingdom to legalise the practice of euthanasia. Their Society is not the first English organisation that has had as its purpose the procuring of legislation that would make easy death available to the incurable. It is influentially supported and it has even been claimed by it that ministers of religion have declared in favour of its proposals. That the churches as organised institutions will approve of any suggestion that a sufferer should be permitted to obtain release by an unnatural agency seems hardly to be expected. Those, however, who have themselves had the experience of attendance upon the incurably ill may consider that to afford them liberation at their own request from their martyrdom, by an inevitable end, is no more than common humanity. It is not to be disputed that the problems, both moral and legal, which have to be faced in the consideration of euthanasia are extremely complex. It may be argued broadly that to end a person’s life when he himself desires it, on account of a painful and incurable malady, is in accord with the compassionate sentiments of the modern world. On the other hand, other issues have to be faced—for instance, the possibility that some mirAcle of medical science might occur which would effect a cure, or that the relatives or other attendants upon the afflicted person might contrive to persuade him to request death for their personal ends. The religious objection that virtue may be obtained through suffering is to some extent nullified by the consideration that those doomed to gradual death through disease are to-day, through the instrumentality of medical science, substantially saved from pain. But if euthanasia became an accepted part of medico-legal practice, it might devolve upon the doctors or relatives of the incurable to appraise them of the hopelessness of their state, which might- otherwise be concealed from them. It may even be suggested that once the State and the public accept euthanasia as desirable in its limited sense, in application to the suffering incurable, the scope of the principle would gradually be extended to include the hopelessly insane, the abnormal or hereditarily unsound, and society would be embarked, almost before it realised it, upon a revolutionary change in its attitude towards the taking of life. It is apparent, however, that a legalised termination of life, voluntary though it be, cannot be adopted as a practice until all aspects of a most complicated issue are thoroughly examined. There is, of course, no fear that an Euthanasia Bill will be adopted in advance of an exhaustive survey of its significances. The final responsibility must rest not with the medical profession, but, as a distinguished surgeon recently declared, with the legislators and the public, and the first requirement is that they should be put in possession of all the arguments.