The end of life — I

Some time back in June, reading an article in The New Yorker titled, ‘The treatment of death’ by Rachel Aviv, I was blown away like nothing else I had read in a long time. Although I disliked the editor’s treatment of Seymour Hersh in his refusal to publish his last piece on Osama, I have to hand it to the magazine. It truly and boldly goes where no man has ever gone before in terms of its cutting edge selection of topics and beyond extraordinary writing.
The article is about the acceptability and increasing prevalence of euthanasia in Belgium (and the west in general), and its continually evolving definition of who falls within the purview of the radical law. For those in Pakistan not in the know yet, euthanasia is “the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering”. Some call it assisted suicide. Doctors are, ironically, the medium of the release from life and different countries have different laws related to it. According to the article, Belgium became the second country after the Netherlands to decriminalise the practice and Canada, Colombia and Luxembourg have since added the law to their books. In the US, the Supreme Court (SC) gave the states the right to resolve the issue in 1997 and, since then, Oregon, Washington, Montana and Vermont have legalised euthanasia. More states will likely join the list.
The part of the article that caught my attention completely was how a process that was created to alleviate the pain of terminally ill patients, such as those with cancer, was now adding on the likes of people suffering from dementia, anorexia, borderline personality disorder, chronic fatigue syndrome, partial paralysis, autism, manic depression and even general unhappiness that could arise from a lack of family, friends and a career. It could well be something as vague as an absence of “goals”.
Scarily enough, the definition of psychological disorders is also veering well into the obscure: “Euthanasia for psychological reasons is done when a psychiatrist agrees that the psychological pain that a person is experiencing cannot be relieved in a way that the individual finds acceptable.” How a patient who admittedly is suffering from a psychological disorder is at the same time considered to also be rational enough to decide that they prefer to end their life seemed incomprehensible to me. But, somehow, they would be considered ‘able’ to present their case to doctors, who would then have the discretion to provide the patient with the assistance to kill him/herself if they could not come up with a solution.
De Wachter, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Leuven in Belgium, believes that “the country’s approach to suicide reflects a crisis of nihilism created by the rapid secularisation of Flemish culture in the past 30 years. He recently approved the euthanasia of a 25-year-old woman with borderline personality disorder who did not “suffer from depression in the psychiatric sense of the word,” he said, “It was more existential; it was impossible for her to have a goal in this life.”
In Belgium, the requirement is to have two doctors sign off for a terminal case. For non-terminal cases, including psychological disorders, the requirement is three. Here are a few examples of people who have already been euthanised in Belgium because they were “tired of life”: “Godelieva De Troyer (64), a healthy Belgian woman who was living with depression, Ann G (44) who asked for euthanasia for psychological pain after being sexually exploited by her psychiatrist, who was treating her for anorexia…In one case in December 2012, doctors announced that they had euthanised 45-year-old deaf identical twins who were going blind and believed they had nothing left to live for.” And the worst case yet: “A 24-year-old healthy woman (Laura) will die by euthanasia this summer for psychological reasons…she has felt that she wanted to die ever since childhood…euthanasia will end her life full of inner conflict, depression and self-destruction.”
According to Aviv, the right-to-die movement seems to gain increasing traction in Europe and North America, “motivated less by the desires of the elderly than by the concerns of a younger generation, whose members derive comfort from the knowledge that they can control the end of their lives.” This pattern of reasoning was exemplified by Brittany Maynard, a 29-year-old newlywed who moved to Oregon last year from California so that she could die on her own terms. She suffered from brain cancer and preferred to be euthanised rather than allowing her disease to take its course. Liberal print media in the US hailed Brittany as a “warrior” and she apparently serves as the inspiration for California to be the next state in line to adopt the End of Life Option Act.
In the world of the young living in the west today, to be anti-religious is the norm whereas to be identified as a person of faith, to believe in God and prophets, their books or miracles is a sure recipe to be marginalised, if not mocked. The family structure in the west has also been unravelling and evolving since the 1970s but at lightning speed in the 21st century. Who can be married, who can have a child, how many parents a child can have even in its embryonic stage seems to be up for discussion and change. So where does that leave future generations?
With no God for starters, lessons in morality may arise from the media in all its forms and, if one is lucky, a real live person, one who also most likely does not believe in God and therefore presents themselves as a model for emulation. Nihilism at its best! There may exist a nuclear family, there may not. Friends? Most likely social media takes care of that need in the virtual world in the most superficial way. Almost all sociology studies conducted on Facebook users, with or without their knowledge, show increasing signs of isolation, low self-esteem and, unsurprisingly, depression, the magic word to bring on the need for euthanasia.
Before it started at least later in life, now depression in minors — even children — seems to be on the rise with a higher usage of anti-depressants being prescribed for them than ever before, even to children as young as eight. “We are getting clear evidence that the onset of depression is happening earlier and earlier,” said Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of the mental health charity Sane in the UK, as far back as 2010. “In previous generations, people would be overwhelmed by depression in their 20s. Now the peak age for onset is 13 to 15: the numbers of teenagers calling us for help suggest the rates of depression in the under 14s have doubled in the last four years and in the 15 to 24 age group it has increased by one-third.”

(To be continued)

The writer is a freelance columnist