Assisted Suicide and a Very Honest Moment

assisted, suicide, ethics, morality, immoral, murder, euthanasia, euthenasia

You've been getting a lot of honest moment's out of me recently, and here's another one. In fact, the honesty here might be a little bit much, just so's you know.

cschande has an article up about proposed assisted suicide in Hawaii. (Naturally, it's Teh Evul.) I will say this: the vast majority of people whom you think would want to commit suicide (terminal cancer patients, for example) don't want to. I will also say this: assisted suicide happens in the US every day. It's illegal, so the doctors involved are risking their licenses and livelihoods, but it still happens. Why?

Let me give you an example. I knew a man whose wife collapsed one day unexpectedly. She hadn't said a word about feeling sicker and sicker and sicker for an entire year. She was too busy, she was scared of doctors, and she was probably afraid of having confirmed what she already suspected: she had cancer. Liver cancer, to be exact, that had metastesized all over her body, including to her brain.

Within 3 weeks, this previously kind, funny young woman became a raging maniac as the cancer ate away her brain. Her husband sent her to hospice, but she was sent back home because she kept assaulting the aides with whatever objects were handy. Once she was home, their daughter had to be sent to live with relatives, because mommy tried to kill her. Then came the pain. The cancer got into the nociception centers of her brain, causing unimaginable pain throughout her entire body. Painkillers can't work once that's happened. There is nothing to do about the pain at that point except feel every bit of it, with no relief, not even for a moment.

She screamed in agony no narcotic could touch for 36 hours straight before her husband called her doctor and begged him to do something, anything. Her doctor brought over an extra vial of morphine. The husband was enraged: morphine didn't work at all, what was this idiot doctor thinking?

"Too much morphine and she won't be able to breathe," the doctor said. "It would be an accident, anyone could understand how easy it would be to give too much morphine to a woman screaming in agony for days."

"There's no other way, is there?" the husband asked.

"She's dying," said the doctor. "You know that. It could be an hour from now or weeks from now, but that pain's not going away. She's not getting better. I'm sorry, but there's nothing more to be done."

I think you can guess what happened next. What would you do? (If it takes you less than 30 seconds to come up with the answer, you didn't think hard enough.)