text stringlengths 0 1.71k |
|---|
Killing someone who has not consented to being killed can |
properly be regarded as euthanasia only when the motive for |
killing is the desire to prevent unbearable suffering on the part |
of the person killed. It is, of course, odd that anyone acting from |
this motive should disregard the wishes of the person for whose |
sake the action is done. Genuine cases of involuntary euthanasia |
appear to be very rare. |
Non-voluntary Euthanasia |
These two definitions leave room for a third kind of euthanasia. |
If a human being is not capable of understanding the choice |
between life and death, euthanasia would be neither voluntary |
nor involuntary, but non-voluntary. Those unable to give consent |
would include incurably ill or severely disabled infants, and |
people who through accident, illness, or old age have permanently |
lost the capacity to understand the issue involved, without |
having previously requested or rejected euthanasia in these |
circumstances. |
179 |
Practical Ethics |
Several cases of non-voluntary euthanasia have reached the |
courts and the popular press. Here is one example. Louis Repouille |
had a son who was described as 'incurably imbecile', |
had been bed-ridden since infancy and blind for five years. |
According to Repouille: 'He was just like dead all the time .... He |
couldn't walk, he couldn't talk, he couldn't do anything: In |
the end Repouille killed his son with chloroform. |
In 1988 a case arose that well illustrates the way in which |
modem medical technology forces us to make life and death |
decisions. Samuel Linares, an infant, swallowed a small object |
that stuck in his windpipe, causing a loss of oxygen to the brain. |
He was admitted to a Chicago hospital in a coma and placed |
on a respirator. Eight months later he was still comatose, still |
on the respirator, and the hospital was planning to move Samuel |
to a long-term care unit. Shortly before the move, Samuel's |
parents visited him in the hospital. His mother left the room, |
while his father produced a pistol and told the nurse to keep |
away. He then disconnected Samuel from the respirator, and |
cradled the baby in his arms until he died. When he was sure |
Samuel was dead, he gave up his pistol and surrendered to |
police. He was charged with murder, but the grand jury refused |
to issue a homicide indictment, and he subsequently received |
a suspended sentence on a minor charge arising from the use |
of the pistol. |
Obviously, such cases raise different issues from those raised |
by voluntary euthanasia. There is no desire to die on the part |
of the infant. It may also be questioned whether, in such cases, |
the death is carried out for the sake of the infant, or for the sake |
of the family as a whole. If Louis Repouille's son was 'just like |
dead all the time', then he may have been so profoundly braindamaged |
that he was not capable of suffering at all. That is also |
likely to have been true of the comatose Samuel Linares. In that |
case, while caring for him would have been a great and no |
doubt futile burden for the family, and in the Linares case, a |
drain on the state's limited medical resources as well, the infants |
180 |
Taking Life: Humans |
were not suffering, and death could not be said to be in, or |
contrary to, their interests. It is therefore not euthanasia, strictly |
speaking, as I have defined the term. It might nevertheless be |
a justifiable ending of a human life. |
Since cases of infanticide and non-voluntary euthanasia are |
the kind of case most nearly akin to our previous discussions |
of the status of animals and the human fetus, We shall consider |
them first. |
JUSTIFYING INFANTICIDE AND |
NON-VOLUNTARY EUTHANASIA |
I As we have seen, euthanasia is non-voluntary when the subject |
has never had the capacity to choose to live or die. This is |
the situation of the severely disabled infant or the older human |
being who has been profoundly intellectually disabled |
since birth. Euthanasia or other forms of killing are also nonvoluntary |
when the subject is not now but once was capable |
of making the crucial choice, and did not then express any |
preference relevant to her present condition. |
The case of someone who has never been capable of choosing |
to live or die is a little more straightforward than that of a person |
who had, but has now lost, the capacity to make such a decision. |
We shall, once again, separate the two cases and take the more |
straightforward one first. For simplicity, I shall concentrate on |
infants, although everything I say about them would apply to |
older children or adults whose mental age is and has always |
been that of an infant. |
Life and Death Decisions for Disabled Infants |
If we were to approach the issue of life or death for a seriously |
disabled human infant without any prior discussion of the ethics |
181 |
Practical Ethics |
of killing in generaL we might be unable to resolve the conflict |
between the widely accepted obligation to protect the sanctity |
of human life, and the goal of reducing suffering. Some say that |
such decisions are 'subjective', or that life and death questions |
must be left to God and Nature. Our previous discussions have, |
however, prepared the ground, and the principles established |
and applied in the preceding three chapters make the issue much |
less baffling than most take it to be. |
In Chapter 4 we saw that the fact that a being is a human |
being, in the sense of a member of the species Homo sapiens, |
is not relevant to the wrongness of killing it; it is, rather, characteristics |
like rationality, autonomy, and self-consciousness |
that make a difference. Infants lack these characteristics. Killing |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.