Financial Aspect of Euthanasia.

Southland Times, Issue 19768, 19 March 1906, Page 3

Financial Aspect of Euthanasia.

A very practical view, oi the ciis cussion regarding the pulling to death of hopeless saluuvr.s is taken by the editor of American Medicine, who suggests that we pay physicians to prolong life, not to shorten it, and that a member oi the medical profession who should practice euthanasia under some future law allowing them to do so would doubtless! find his income curtailed, no mallei' how' he might be praised in the abstract by philanthropists, lie writes: —“ Civilisation depends upon the safety of each life, and it would cut away our very luiindation to g*ive anyone the legal right to destroy others, it is this inherited instinct which cause some Stales to abolish capital punishments, though it is generally believed that they thereby do not properly guard the lives ol the normal citizens. The medical profession has but one reason for its existence, and that reason is the prolongation of life. It is a reason hound up in the very growth of modern society itsell. lo give a physician the legal right to end a life would therefore. destroy the foundation of the existence o: the profession. As a hotly, physicians are emphatic against all such propositions. In addition, it is frequently pointed out that it is not always possible to say when a life is surely doomed. Patients not infrequently recover from conditions which had every appearance of being latab If a phvsician had the right to end a painful life, which apparent ly was soon to end itself, how hum would he retain his practice? People want a doctor who will struggle to keep them alive lo the very end. even when appearances are all against them/’