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Australia's Suicide 'Choice' The following article originally appeared on On-line Opinion, an Australian website. It is reprinted here with the author's permission..
Modern Western societies such as Australia highly value intelligence,
independence, youth, physical beauty and agility, material wealth and
enjoyment from physical pursuits such as travel, sex and sports.
Self-determined, rational individual choices are supposed to deliver to us
the best of what's on offer. It is not surprising, therefore, that
people who fall outside many, or all, of these values, such as many people
who have disabilities and aged people, are the subject of much
discrimination and abuse. Dependency on others for sometimes very basic tasks makes many of us
fear disability, our inevitably declining bodies and mental capacity as an
unnecessary tragedy, an anomaly of nature -- a curse from which science
has not quite yet cured humanity. Our hopes and huge amounts of money are
invested in science and technology for cures of all kinds of disabilities,
diseases, and even from death itself. Genetic manipulation, embryonic and
adult stem cell research, cloning, and other techniques are frequently
reported as offering new glimmers of progress towards a Utopia of forever
healthy, physically whole, happy and long-lived, perhaps immortal, people.
Dr Philip Nitschke [Australia's version of Jack Kevorkian] and New South Wales Premier Bob Carr, for instance,
have built successful media circuses around their 'careers', using our
fears of the human condition and the mirage of a brave new world, free
from suffering. Carr has even caught on to the success of Nitschke's workshops-of-the-willing
and is having one of his own, promoting the embryonic stem-cell
industry, with Christopher
Reeve on his billboard. Lisette Nigot, a Perth resident, was one of three elderly people who
killed themselves recently after attending workshops
conducted by Philip Nitschke. She killed herself just before her 80th
birthday, has been portrayed as a successful and highly intelligent
academic who had lived the good life of world travel and had rubbed
shoulders with the famous in managing the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New
York. She was reported as having some minor health problems but
essentially as still healthy. However, she did not see any possibility of
good life beyond 80. Her suicide was reported as being prompted by a fear
of decline and dependency on others as an undignified life. The West Australian's Editorial "Suicide asserts right to
choice" (27/11/02) suggested that Ms. Nigot's decision to
suicide was a legitimate and brave assertion of her 'right to choice'.
She had "rejected old age and its potential trials and constraints".
As is usual in this kind of 'debate', the editorial set up any
opposition to this 'right' as being mainly religiously motivated: "Suicide
is often associated with despair, which in this context is defined as a
loss of faith in a deity". But it appears Ms. Nigot had lost faith in
her own deities: Material Wealth, Individual Choice and
Self-Determination, Independence, Intellectual and Physical Intactness and
the Pleasures derived from these. These deities, however, appear to be no
less illusory as a path to human happiness than many people in our secular
age think religion is. The evidence of this illusion is in the news every
day. Unprecedented material and technological progress, medical advances
and opportunities for entertainment of every kind have not made us happier
people. These developments have brought much good but, beyond a
certain measure of them, our wellbeing has declined. Rising rates of
depression, suicide, social isolation, decline in public trust as well as
many environmental problems are symptoms of the failure of this dominant
value system. Contrary to our beliefs about disability, old age and dying, dependency
on others does not need to lead to an undignified and unbearable life of
suffering. There are many
studies that demonstrate that people with significant disabilities
experience a life satisfaction that is as good or better than that of the
average population. Similar studies, some conducted over the time of an
entire generation, demonstrate the same for elderly
people. Other studies show that the closer one gets to dying, the less
enthusiasm there is for hastening one's own death. How can this be explained? Well, human nature appears to be sociable
after all and meaningful relationships and support, when embraced, create
wellbeing. Without having developed empathy for one another in the act of
caring for dependent and vulnerable others the human race would have gone
the way of the dinosaurs a long time ago. Not only do we need others to
survive but also we need others in order to grow and flourish as
individual people and as communities. Virtues like kindness, persistence,
courage, empathy, and sociability are developed in such
relationships. As the origins of the word reflect, 'courage' does
indeed come from the heart. We must face it: none of us was born independent. We need others for
the most basic support tasks when babies, when ill, and in frail age. Our
stages of independence are only temporary and are based on other times
when we were dependent and supported by others. When we acknowledge our
interdependence as a fact of life we may come to view the world
differently and accept both sides of the coin of life: independence and
dependence, pleasure and pain, highs and lows, as the inevitable parts of
a whole, rich life. Devalue one side of the coin and it becomes worthless:
individual lives and communities lose their meaning and collapse. Tragedy, therefore, is not so much contained in the lives of people who
struggle with undeniably and tremendously difficult issues in their lives,
such as pain, dependency and vulnerability. Real tragedy occurs when we
deny our human nature by offering a 'choice' between inadequate social
support and nothing less than cure or death. It is a tragedy when we
applaud the ultimate celebration of one side of the coin only, leading to
the ending of a human life because assistance from others is felt to be
degrading. When people ask for death their deepest motivations, including physical
and mental pain, are often associated with a lack of relationships and
social support. A society that emphasises escape from our human nature and
abandons people to a 'right' to individual choice in response to
suffering is not viable. We can use our self-determination to choose a
different path. Why not use the positive experience of disabled, elderly
and dying people as one such path? If we do not acknowledge such experience as guiding stories to life
worth living, Ms. Nigot's example shows that it will only be a matter of
time before the first Australians who have a disability will be given the
'right' to death by a society that does not welcome them. Since
disability will always make up a significant part of the human condition,
this is a concern for all of us.
Erik Leipoldt is
completing his PhD study of disability perspective and the issues of
euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide at Edith Cowan University in Australia. He
has been a quadriplegic for 25 years. Posted Jan. 19, 2003
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