Nothing as It Seems

In light of the large public support and recent international trends, it seems more likely to be a matter of when, and not if, there will be legislation One topic that has received increasing public discussion in recent years is the issue of voluntary physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia. PAS and euthanasia are not limited to contemporary societies: the Athenian poet of the 5th century BC Cratinus referred to euthanasia – roughly translated as ‘good death’ – as a fast, gentle, painless death; the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca thought it was preferable to choose death than to live with excruciating, incurable pain. Christianity, however, viewed voluntary death more negatively. The Catholic Church, for instance, regards suicide as intrinsically wrong. The Christian position on PAS has been the dominant viewpoint for several centuries, but it is no longer universally shared. The Ethics of PAS  The UK public healthcare system, the National Health Service (NHS), defines ...

An version of this article was printed in Humanism Ireland , May-June, Vol. 152 (2015)   Until the second half of the twentieth century, there was little disagreement, at least within mainstream western thought, over the standard for human death. Death occurs when the heart has stopped beating and breathing has come to an end. The issue of whether or not someone is dead was generally held to be a simple question of fact. However, scientific and technological advances since the late 1950s—where the heart and breathing of patients could be artificially maintained by ventilators for weeks or months after all functions of the brain are irreversibly lost—have made the whole question more complex. As a result of this, the Harvard Brain Death Committee—which included a number of medical professionals, lawyers and theologians—was established; in their landmark 1968 report they argued that the clinical standard of diagnosing death should be when the whole brain, or brainstem...

It emerged just recently that doctors in an Irish hospital are seeking legal advice over whether they can switch off the life support machine of a woman who is 16 weeks pregnant . The woman, believed to be in her mid to late 20s, suffered a head trauma and a clot to the brain a number of weeks ago. The family of the woman—who is reported as clinically “brain dead,” but still undeniably a living human organism*—want the medical team to allow her to die. Even though there’s no chance of revival, doctors and medical staff at the hospital are reluctant to carry out her family’s wishes because she is about 16 weeks pregnant. In order to save the life of the foetus, sustaining the mother until a Caesarean section can be carried out would be required. Some people have asked why life-support is not turned off in this case.  Conor O’Mahony, a lecturer of law at UCC, wrote in the Irish Examiner that “ [w]hile the Supreme Court has held that people have a constitutional right to...

Should terminally ill patients have a right to die? A version of this article was printed in  Humanism Ireland , Sep-Oct, Vol. 142 (2013) Suppose you have just discovered you are suffering from multiple sclerosis, a disease of the nervous system. This condition, you learn, is progressive and, in time, you’ll become fully paralysed; most likely, as a result, you’ll be entirely dependent on the care of others. Worse still, you realise you’ll no longer be able to look after yourself and will not be capable of swallowing the food somebody else placed in your mouth. To avoid dying from hunger, you’ll have to be fed through a tube inserted into your stomach. Fortunately for most, the chances of suffering from multiple sclerosis are rare. This is not the case, however, for 59-year-old Marie Fleming who is terminally ill with the condition. Although it has no impairing on her cognitive facility, she suffers frequently from severe and at times intolerable pain. She has fough...