Whose Life is it Anyway?

Some weeks back I read of a family that had approached the Supreme Court for permission to die. A poor Muslim family from Mumbai - one of them had cancer, one muscular dystrophy and the petitioner himself had asthma. All three chronic illnesses with little certainty of a permanent cure in at least muscular dystrophy. It was not known what the Supreme Court finally ordered. In another case some months earlier, a mother had approached the courts for permission to have her son die peacefully as he too was suffering from an incurable disease.

The courts denied permission on the basis of the existing law and the boy died an uncomfortable death generating debate on the right to die. The courts had of course given their directions based on the existing law which disallows such permission. In the US , the case of Terri Schiavo who lived as a vegetable for long as the courts denied permission for her life support systems to be taken off attracted a lot of attention.

At one level, ending life artificially can never be morally acceptable to those who fear God. The killing of another human being on the grounds that there is no quality of life is not accepted by the legal system and is repugnant to morality. But things are beginning to get complicated. During the recent hospitalization and subsequent death of one of my aunts, one of my cousins muttered under his breath that doctors had plugged her into a ventilator and kept her mechanically breathing long after life had departed, so that they could milk the patient’s family for a few extra numbers of days.

In that emotionally charged situation, rare is the person who will in India at least come up to challenge the doctor’s decision and demand that artificial life support systems be removed. Further, it is even more complicated that in such situations to demand that an EEG be done to demonstrate brain death or otherwise. The rampant commercialization of medicine has meant that it is no longer the ethics of euthanasia that are traditionally taught that come into play but also the ethics of greed which is as much prevalent here.

The ethics of greed that some times makes vultures out of medicos would actually ensure that they superficially support the concept of prolonging life artificially and vegetally – not because they value life but because every day a patient is trapped to machines and tubes and contraptions, there is money being credited to the hospital’s bank account. Against all wisdom, there may be actually a case when it is right to say that there is no more life in all conventional understanding and to spare every one further indignity, it is time to switch off the lights and call it curtains.