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The Debate: Point and Counterpoint
In Robert Orfali's excellent book, Death With Dignity, the author provides a comprehensive summary of potential arguments against medical aid in dying - and then provides the compelling counter arguments.
We are extremely grateful for Robert Orfali's permission to adapt Chapter 7 of Death with Dignity for our Canadian context, as we've done below. We encourage everyone to read the book, the hard copy can be purchased here or buy it for your kindle for just 99c here.
We are also extremely grateful to Dr. Johnna Fisher. She has taken Robert Orfali's points and adapted them for our Canadian context - and added some original content too. Johnna Fisher is the author of the best-selling Canadian Textbook on Biomedical Ethics and a member of our Board of Directors.
- Slippery slope reasoning is based on fear, flawed logic and a misunderstanding of the facts.
- Where will the line be drawn between acceptable and unacceptable aid in dying?
- Will physician assisted dying become coercive for those without adequate healthcare support?
- Will rationing of healthcare services in the future discriminate against the elderly and take away their rights?
- Why is the pratice in Oregon to offer medically-assisted dying to people who are physically capable of taking their own lethal dose, and deny it to those who are not?
- Will there come a time when it will be considered discriminatory to deny medically-assisted dying to people who are incompetent?
- Is the government's health funding crisis a slippery slope to involuntary euthanasia?
- Are we making it easier for our doctors to kill, instead of doing the difficult work involved in curing? Doctors could be tempted to take the easy way out.
- The psychology of doctors will begin to subtly change as they grow accustomed to having a "license to kill". It may cause them to cheapen the value of their patients’ lives.
- Providing a "license to kill" undermines the trust between physicians and their patients. It creates suspicions among patients that their doctors may be trying to kill them.
- The Hippocratic oath physicians take says "First, do no harm" and death is considered to be the ultimate harm. For the physician, at least, human life in living bodies commands respect and reverence that is inconsistent with killing or hastening death.
- Physicians will take the easy way out and prescribe hastening drugs instead of mastering the discipline of palliative care.
- To want to control one’s death is narcissistic and arrogant. The idea of a ‘right’ to control the time and manner of our death is a strange one, as if we could control death.
- The right to die creates another source of pressure for vulnerable people to end their lives. Even if the dying person does not want to die, he or she may feel a duty to die so as not to burden others.
- Might appeals be made to the elderly, the sick, and the disabled to die for their country?
- Greedy relatives may want Grandma to “hurry up and die” so their inheritance is not diminished by further health-care costs or she's no longer a financial drain on the family.
- The opponents like to focus on a single issue—such as pain, depression, or disability—and then claim to have solutions.
- Hospice is the only solution we need. There is no need to legalize hastening options.
- Medically-assisted dying devalues human life. The vulnerable will feel that their life is not worth living.
- It is not appropriate to make sweeping and potentially dangerous public policy changes to benefit a small class of individuals, however compelling their stories might be.
- Maybe they’ll discover something the day after you end your life.
- Patients have been known to recover on their own, thus fooling modern medicine. Last minute miracles are always possible. Consequently, assisted dying must not be legalized.
- A misdiagnosis could result in a person taking his or her life prematurely.
- Grievously ill patients are too sick, medicated, and confused to think clearly. They are not capable of making an autonomous choice.
- Oregon’s data is too good to be true. Surely, there must be a coverup, somewhere.
- Doctors shouldn't have to be involved, some don't want to be involved because of their personal beliefs, and others don't necessarily have the background and training to be involved.
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