Questioning the Doctor's Duty.

There was a bill making its tortuous way through parliament recently on the question of assisted dying. The purpose was to enact a law permitting doctors to help those patients suffering incurable and terminal conditions to voluntarily end their lives peacefully.

It attracted much impassioned debate, which is understandable up to a point given the view in modern cultures that suicide is somehow a sin or at least a crime of sorts. In other words, that longevity is the first moral imperative to which we must all adhere. It’s a view I strongly disagree with, and it’s interesting to note that suicide is no longer deemed a crime in law as it used to be.

But the problem lies with the position of doctors in the matter, the question being whether it is reasonable or ethical to expect a doctor to be complicit in an act of suicide. A lot of doctors went public with their vehement opposition to the idea, and herein lies my point:

One has to ask what a doctor’s function and order of priority should be. The first priority is simple: to cure the sick and maintain good health in those who are not sick. But what of those patients whose conditions are incurable and who are suffering as a result? To my mind the second priority then applies, which is to alleviate the suffering. If the only way of achieving that is to help the sufferer to voluntarily end their life, then that is what we have a right to expect the doctor to do. And so it further seems to me that any doctor who objects to doing so is abdicating his or her professional responsibility.