Clinical Ethics--Suicide

[Gregory Matthews]

In another thread, Aubery made the following  statement:  " . . . sometimes life has to be quantity--else, suicide looks awfully tempting."  I will make a couple of statements:

1)  Active Suicide is doing something that ends the life of the person before the body of the person is ready to end its life.  A historic example of this is Socrates who drank hemlock in 399 B.C. and promptly died.

2) Death can occur by simply allowing the process of death to occur and not preventing it.  Some would call this Passive Suicide.  I have a problem with that term but do not intend to make the  term a focus of this thread.

3) The individual must make the decision as to whether or not the quality of life is worth living and that can not be imposed on that person.  In my next response I will give an example of this.

 

[Gregory Matthews]

Example:

While employed in a hospital, we had a middle-aged woman who would occasionally come into our ICU.  She was total care.  She   could not do anything as far as taking normal care of her  body.  NOTE:  She could breath on her own.

She had a very complex wheel chair that she had learned to drive, in part by blowing air into a tube.  It was common on her visits to our hospital for the staff to place    her in this wheel chair and she would travel around the hospital seeing what was  happening.

She normally lived at home.  Essential care was provided her at home.  Her husband, was employed and worked a normal schedule.  Her visits to our ICU were often a result of her husband needing to take a trip.

 In her life at home, she got out into society.  Her husband would take her to church and to shopping malls on occasion.  She could visit with friends. 

My point in all of this is:  She had a life.  It was not a life that I would have chosen for myself.  But, she was not me.  Her life had enough quality that she wanted to live even though a total care patient confined to a   wheel chair.

NOTE:  I can give you other examples  of total care patients who considered that they had a quality of  life that was worth living.  Iike this woman they had some function, could talk and some mechanical control due to blowing into tubes.  I am thinking of a male who lived at home and was cared  for by his mother.  I often visited him at his home.  I am thinking of a 30 YO female who was cared for by her Father.  She could not speak and communicated by an alphabet board.

 

[Nan]

I agree with your point three and that implies an individual has the ability to make a rational choice.

I have a huge problem when putting that choice into effect, involves others in the suicide.......a case in this country last week was that of a driver who deliberately drove his car into an oncoming vehicle causing the death of the occupants of that vehicle.  He received a prison sentence.

 Another example is choosing to jump in front of an oncoming train.....the trauma that causes the helpless train driver is often permanent.