blog.bioethics.net

Please note how people desiring assistance in dying might turn to friends and family members rather than medical professionals. Does anybody think the latter are "better qualified" than the former to provide such assistance? Of course medical professionals control access to certain substances that can be used to cause death, but I think that makes them, at most, "better positioned" rather than "better qualified."

- by Bob Koepp on Jul 13, 2005 at 12:36 PM | link

Kind of demonstrates that assisting a suicide isn't a medical act doesn't it? Or should the fellow be prosecuted for practicing medicine without a license?

- by Wesley J. Smith on Jul 13, 2005 at 8:10 PM | link

I think arguments that attempt to portray assisting in a suicide (or euthanasia) as a medical act strain credulity to the breaking point, and show how little respect there is for the disciplinary integrity of the second oldest profession.
Bergeron should be prosecuted for homicide only if there is evidence that his actions were malicious.

- by Bob Koepp on Jul 13, 2005 at 11:13 PM | link

I think that assisted suicide, if it is to be accepted by all states be accomplished by trained and certified technicians with legal access to specific death drugs. No physician participation should be involved except for diagnosis and prognosis. ..Maurice.

- by Maurice Bernstein, M.D. on Jul 14, 2005 at 3:20 AM | link

Bob, that sounds like the old "compassionate homicide" statute idea. Let's analyze what that means in practice.
Generalizing your comment to the larger group of disabled people killed by family members shifts the burden of proof from "did they do it?" to "did they do it maliciously?"
Considering how common it is for stressed males to resort to violence against their female partners - in American society, anyway, this effectively creates a class of "lesser victims" based on age, health and disability.
You might want to check out a couple of resources. Here's a case study of the Chicago Media running amok:
From 'mercy killing' to 'domestic violence'
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/0302/0302ft7.html
And for a broader look at "mercy killings, check out this article about some recent research on 'mercy killings'(I doubt the editors here picked up on this article or the research - it's too reality-based.):
http://www.thnt.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050620/NEWS/506200387/1001
Excerpt:
***
When an elderly spouse — usually the husband — kills his ailing mate
and then himself, the public perception is often that the homicide-suicide
was committed out of love, with mutual knowledge and consent.
In fact, this "mercy-killing" perception is a myth, say scientists who
have studied homicide-suicides among the elderly. The husbands in
such cases are often abusers, and the wives are rarely complicit.
In many such cases, defense wounds indicate that the wife fought
for her life.
***
Cheers.
(

- by Stephen Drake on Jul 14, 2005 at 12:00 PM | link

Stephen,
Generalizing from your comment would suggest that in such contexts there can be no such thing as 'mercy killing', there is only killing, period.
But your references don't allow for generalization either. You only deal with homicide-suicide cases within a certain region, and only in a percentage of cases does there seem to be evidence that the actions stem more from domestic abuse than a desire to end suffering.
The reality of mercy killing/assisted suicide seems to be a mixed bag, where some people end the lives of others out of genuine compassion, and others do not, and there is no science of intentions to sharply distinguish one from the other.
That makes it tough to make legislation that applies to everyone, and tough for those who want to impose their morality on everyone. C'est la vie.

- by Sam I am on Jul 15, 2005 at 5:29 PM | link

Sam,
Here in the U.S., anyway, we have this thing called "prosecutorial discretion." Prosecutors have a great deal of leeway in whether or not to press charges, or to decide what those charges will be. Then there's plea-bargaining to throw into the process.
In other words, there's plenty of flexibility in the system right now. And while I don't know of any studies of the judicial outcomes of elderly "mercy killings," parents and caregivers who kill disabled kids get off a lot more lightly than those who kill nondisabled kids.
Wanting to have the killings of disabled people treated in the same way as nondisabled people is no more forcing values on others than those who want lighter treatment than those who kill disabled people.

- by Stephen Drake on Jul 15, 2005 at 6:00 PM | link

Stephen,
You seem to be gliding from issue to issue: it started with an item over an alleged mercy killing by a middle-aged man, then you started in with considerations of gender violence in 'homicide-suicide' cases among the elderly, and now you are at euthanasia with infants. It's hard to keep up.
But I take it that your main point, across all these contexts, is expressed in your last paragraph: Aristotle's idea of formal justice of 'treat like cases alike', both in ethics and the law.
The problem of course is to convince people that all cases in question are 'alike.' Today a parent in Florida killed his healthy 3 year old son because he believed that his son was 'acting gay.' Many people will not, I suppose, see that case as the same as parents who cannot bear the suffering of their terminally ill child, desire it to come to an end, and act on that desire. I think it would be judged differently in court and differently in many (not all) people's ethical judgments. What makes the difference is not that one child is disabled and the other is not; it has to do with what kind of terrible situation that child finds his or herself.
To say that people must regard these two killings in the same way IS, I think, forcing values on others.

- by Sam I am on Jul 16, 2005 at 3:35 AM | link