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Musing on Sydney's news

21 July 2003

Life, death, the universe & euthanasia

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing - Anon.

Debate is raging all over the place about euthanasia. Should we or shouldn't we? Is it compassionate to put a person in pain, who has no chance of quality of life, out of their misery? Or is it murder?

"Where there's life, there's hope," they say. But where do you draw the line between life and existence?

There's a private member's euthanasia bill being put forward in New Zealand at the moment. South Australia just had a big euthanasia rally. People have gone to gaol for "murdering" their much-loved spouse - for simply complying with a dying person's request.

Ok, cards on the table.

If I was so sick that I had no chance of making websites and digital art again, nor work or play, and was in constant discomfort, I'd want to be put down. I think most people feel the same way. A few years ago, this was brought home to me when I had surgery on my colon, and afterwards my colon shut down. I was vomiting regularly, on a drip, too sick to sleep, so I didn't even have night-time respite.

My stomach bloated to the point where I looked 8 months pregnant and the constant nausea was such that I my only relief was to moan. Constantly, much to one night nurse's chagrin. "Will you keep quiet?" Florence Fightingale snapped, "you're keeping other patients awake". I moaned "sorry" in reply, and moaned on. No choice.

Morphine and pethidine didn't help; they just made me throw up more. I could have really done with a medicinal anti-nausea joint and I haven't touched the stuff in years! Normally I like to stay sharp (as a bowling ball?) but at the time staying sharp wasn't a priority.

After three days of this horrific pain I had a distinct thought ...

If I felt like this, and if I knew that I would never, ever feel better, then I'd want someone to put me out of my misery. I endured this purgatory for three days, until the surgeon said "Quick, give her an NG tube" (urk!). I wasn't dying but for a while life wasn't worth living. Some unfortunates endure far worse discomfort than I experienced - and for years.

Think about it. Years of torture. Intense torture. Years of it.

It blows my mind to imagine that kind of suffering. And to think that we determinedly hold them in the bubble of torture, often in the face of their pleas for mercy ... because we love them and don't want to let them go?

Torturing the helpless for the sake of our ideologies. I'm not a terribly emotional type, but I get misty when I think of these poor creatures locked in such an interminable nightmare while the holier-than-thous pressure the dying people's loved ones into keeping the tubes in, the machines on, the agony maintained. And, I repeat, we are using scarce resources that could be used to save others' lives to perpetrate this cruelty. That's where it gets sticky. Where do we draw the line? How do we know a patient won't have a miraculous recovery? But then again, how can we know how many patients we'd save by not hoping against hope for a miracle? We could put the huge resources required to facilitate miracles towards the recovery of less sick people who do have a hope of a meaningful future.

Now things get beyond sticky. We're talking heavy treacle here.

We now come to the point where we decide who lives and who dies. It doesn't just happen, you know. We make those kinds of decisions already. We do it every day.

Middle and upper class people don't usually understand this, but our elected representatives make decisions about who lives and dies all the time, and I'm not talking about war. The unemployed. Those on paltry sickness benefits. Pensioners. Many of these people can't afford to live a healthy lifestyle. In effect, we kill them ... by inches. That's what poverty is, accelerated death.

The poor can't afford therapeutic drugs. Or life-prolonging surgery. Or psychotherapy (how many homeless beggars with psychiatric illness do we see in the city these days?). Or to buy fresh fruit and vegetables (although high fat/salt/sugar food is cheap). To afford the electricity to heat their homes when it gets cold or air conditioning to cool them down during heat waves. To maintain cleanliness. To replace that lumpy old mattress that's turning their backs into question marks. To live in a safe area. To buy warm clothes. To socialise and find love that could sustain them through the hard times.

In the end, it once again comes down to Darwinian principles. Survival of the fittest. Many years ago I read about how some tribes of Eskimos would put their elderly on ice floes and send them off into the ocean. Not because they were cruel (after all, there weren't any detention centres in the Arctic circle). The sick and elderly knew the deal. They willingly sacrificed themselves so the rest of the tribe would survive.

And yes - via our governments - we put people on "ice floes" too. It's called social security and stigma. We marginalise and exclude, discriminate and deny. Tax dollars only go so far.

But for some reason we get all "thingy" about euthanasia. It brings the whole "ice floe" situation home in a direct way. When it comes to political decisions about distribution of income we can always smooth it over with sophistry. When it comes to lethal injections, it's not so easy. But for all practical means and purposes, it's the same thing.

In the end the whole issue rests on our honesty, character and courage. One wonders if we'll ever find politicians with enough of these characteristics to make the hard decisions that must be made.

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