No matter what your personal religious or ethical beliefs regarding your role as an individual physician in helping an individual patient end his or her life, a recent talk by Dalhousie University bioethicist Dr. Nuala Kenny at the World Medical Association raises points worth considering for the medical profession as a whole. All these trends have led to the potential involvement of the physician into any aspect of human life, whether it is appropriate or not. But the physician is not seen as a paternalistic entity, directing all these elements of the person's life, but rather as the servant of science and technology who provides whatever a person may request. This is where Dr. Kenny sees problems for the medical profession. If doctors act on whatever requests a patient makes, including the request to help end life, I think Dr. Kenny is arguing the physician is abdicating his or her responsibility as a professional.
Death becomes just another treatment option to end suffering.
Rather than talk about respecting the freedom of choice for a patient to request euthanasia, Dr. Kenny points out this is anything but a choice for the physician, who is expected to act on the patient's wishes. If the medical profession accepts this perspective, doctors sacrifice any independent ability to act in a manner which they consider best for the patient. As Dr. Kenny and others have pointed out, suffering can have components far beyond the purely physical or mental, and it is wrong to look to medicine and the medical practitioner as the only means of providing surcease of that suffering. As a result of where we stand today, society has to openly make some tough choices. If Canadians want to give people the right to kill themselves with the moral blessing of the state, maybe they should look to someone other than physicians to take care of this task.