Should sick and elderly people who are tired of life be helped with assisted suicide if they wish it?

Cutting edge elder suicide debate in the Netherlands

By Derek Humphry

Now that voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide for patients in great distress are legal from next year in the Netherlands, the debate is already under way about whether those who are old, sick, and tired of life should have a suicide pill available if they choose.
On 14 December 2001, some 600 people gathered in a hall in Amsterdam to debate the issue of elderly suicide. The discussion centered on whether a ‘peaceful pill’ could successfully be developed scientifically, should it be freely available or on strict prescription, and whether the government ought to run a controlled trial.
It is typical of the Dutch mentality that they tackle social problems head on. The country already has legalized prostitution, same-sex marriages, and limited legal access to recreational drugs. On January 1 the Netherlands becomes the first nation to legalize voluntary euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, but under tight guidelines. The chief rule is that the patient must be suffering greatly with no treatments remaining available.
Public pressure to start considering the next step of ‘tired of life’ senior citizens caused the Dutch Voluntary Euthanasia Society nvve.freeler.nl to call the public meeting. We are merely meeting the demands of our members, says the organization, and this was a responsible precursor to settling the issue.
The meeting opened with a filmed interview with Judge Van Drion, himself in declining old age who caused a public furor by sending a letter to a Dutch newspaper advocating the freedom of old people to commit suicide if they wished.
Consequently, the suicide pill is named in Dutch “Pil Van Drion’,
although its constituent chemicals have yet to be decided upon. The meeting in Amsterdam came to no decisions, nor was it expected to, but it was the first public airing of an issue that has been quietly seething in the senior population for 20 or more years.
The unspoken argument has been as to why cannot old people who are in poor health, reached their 70s or 80s, and see no further point in struggling to live, eating up their own and public financial resources, have available what some euphemistically call the ‘magic pill’?
Some in the Dutch medical profession believe that the Van Drion pill is ‘a bridge too far’ at this point, and that the name Drion has become a metaphor for discussing the issue. No one should run away with the idea that there is yet such a pill. Also, the open debate on the ethics of its distribution has only just begun.
Other right-to-die groups, notably in Switzerland, argue for non-physician-assisted suicide, but that presupposes the availability of lethal drugs. Because assisted suicide is not illegal in Switzerland, drugs are more easily available to those who know how to obtain them.
A few doctors around the world, notably Dr. Philip Nitschke in Australia, are searching for a suicide pill that does not contain any substances controlled by governments, who are nearly all antithetical to any form of euthanasia. So far their investigations are chiefly with inert gases, nicotine, and puffer fish.
Medical scientists in Europe are looking to develop a more powerful form of pentobarbital as the deliverance mechanism, although that substance could only be administered within the law.
Elderly suicide is more prevalent than teenage suicide. For instance, in the USA, where the elderly constitute only 13 percent of the population, they account for 20 percent of all suicides. Experts estimate that 40 percent of elder suicides are not reported because they are ‘silent suicides’ – from overdoses, self-starvation, or declining to take medications.

FOOTNOTE: Definitions: “Voluntary Euthanasia” = requested death by a lethal medical injection; ‘physician-assisted suicide’ = patient consumes lethal drugs prescribed by doctor; ‘non-physician-assisted suicide’ = patient secures own drugs, ingesting them under guidance.
DerekHumphry.Starband.net



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