My Dilemma

            After our final home visit, having seen a great deal of pain and suffering over 6 full days of home visits (as well as during my time as a caregiver with HomeChoice Senior Care), a question was raised in my mind that I just had to ask the doctor we were traveling with. What do you think about human euthanasia? The question had been asked here in India before to Dr. Raj but I had forgotten his response in the heat of the moment, and I’ll go into his response (which I agree with) later, but for now I’ll focus on our doctor’s response, which really troubled me. She told me that human euthanasia goes against everything that the Hindu people believe in. The belief is that karma is responsible for the person’s present suffering, and that this suffering is the only way for the patient to achieve eventual liberation at the time of their death. She explained that it was not our place, nor any human’s place, to interfere with this process. What troubled me most was the fact that this rationale was rather similar to that of many Christians and other people I’ve heard arguments from in the United States, in that this is happening because it’s meant to happen because someone or something or God or the universe or whatever wants it to happen; it’s destiny; it’s meant to be. Now, I wholeheartedly respect the Hindu culture and the ideology of Christians and the rationale of anyone else who opposes euthanasia for these reasons, but this reasoning is entirely too functionalistic for me. Before I got too frustrated, I looked back in my notes from about two and a half weeks ago from when this question was posed to Dr. Raj, and was somewhat pacified by how much it made sense to me and the degree to which I agreed with it.

            Dr. Raj’s response was that he essentially held a 3-fold opinion on the controversy. The first aspect that he considered was that 90% of people who are suffering can have their quality of life improved to the point of no longer desiring death when palliative care is provided. Alright, probably true, I thought. But what about those remaining 10% of people who, no matter what pain meds, counseling, or therapy are given to them, cannot be relieved from their pain and suffering? I wondered, as my eyes moved to the second bullet point of my notes. “However, in the remaining 10%, he sees it as a moral and ethical practice.” YEAH! I thought. See, Dr. Raj, the father of palliative care in India, agrees with me, so I have to be right. But I knew there was that third fold that would throw another wrench into things: “But, before we can even HAVE the argument as to whether or not human euthanasia is ethical on a state, nation, or worldwide scale, palliative care must be made adequately available to all people within that respective area.” Oh… right, I thought to myself. As I was getting all excited that Dr. Raj wasn’t one of those people who blindly oppose euthanasia regardless of circumstance, I forgot the most important part of this viewpoint. While I firmly believe that euthanasia should be an option for cases in which all of these criteria are met, I would find it hard to argue that it would be morally correct to end someone’s life without having quality palliative care offered to them, which is so grossly unavailable to such a large portion of the Indian people, as well as people of the entire world.

            How’s that for a dilemma to ponder? Thanks for reading.