Nick Tonti-Filippini is a bioethicist who serves on various Australian government committees and teaches at a Catholic institute in Melbourne. He is 55.
Some of those years must have gone slowly for him, as he is chronically ill. Fortunately, he has the training to analyse his difficulties with critical detachment. So his reflections on euthanasia, whose publication in the local media today coincides with the celebration, are worth passing on.
He begins with a description of his condition.
“I am chronically ill with a progressive rheumatoid auto-immune disease that destroyed my kidneys and causes inflammation around the lungs, inner chest walls and heart, ischaemic heart disease and peripheral neuropathy. I have been dependent on dialysis for 20 years and I have undergone 15 angioplasties and the placement of eight stents to recover some blood flow after the failure of coronary bypass surgery.”
Nonetheless, he says, euthanasia and assisted suicide are not the answer to his illness. In support of his contention he offers three arguments. First, Nick says, fear of being dependent can be a powerful motivation to seek euthanasia:
“The fear of being a burden is a major risk to the survival of those who are chronically ill. If euthanasia were lawful, that sense of burden would be greatly increased, for there would be even greater moral pressure to relinquish one’s hold on a burdensome life.”
Second, the existence of a euthanasia option would undermine the development of better palliative care facilities.
This notion is supported by many disability activists. They say that it spreads subtle and widespread expectation that death must be better than disability.
“If the legalization of assisted suicide continues, I believe the rank and file will some day see nothing wrong with hastening the deaths of many people,” writes disability expert Dr Carol J. Gill.
“They will stand by and do nothing to stop it and will endorse the policies and institutions that advance it – not because they are evil people but because it will no longer be evil in our culture to do so. It will be compassionate, respectful, routine.”
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