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The Touchstone of Compassion
| Article
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10820 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
3 / 1993 |
1,868 Words |
| Author
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Walter W. Benjamin
Walter W. Benjamin is professor of religion and applied ethics
at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. |
The ethics of euthanasia are increasingly caught in the conflict between two moral goods that are the consequence of the exponential explosion of medical technology following World War II. Before then, medicine was largely an art. A limited medical armamentarium forced physicians to heed the positive command of the Hippocratic oath to fight death. Their ministrations were largely pastoral. They had precious little science in their little black bags. Negatively, they promised: "I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody if asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect."
Today, medical knowledge has a half-life of but five or so years, and physician artistry is often submerged under a tidal wave of new technology. Iatrogenesis (harm induced by physicians or hospitals) is proportional to intervention, and millions fear being left in a twilight zone between death and a fully personal existence. Because medical novelty is almost unlimited, great harm as well as good can be done. Hence, the new norm: "Doctor, in my dying, please ensure my dignity, happiness, and integrity." If killing or shortening the process of dying is necessary to preserve these values, who in our individualistic culture can deny the right of patients to exercise such autonomy?
Under the Hippocratic oath, the target of the physician was narrow and simple: Death was the enemy. The new norm demands heavier physician accountability. He must know a great deal about a patient's religious values, familial wishes, living wills, and personal desires. Ironically, this comes at a time when technology has hammered a wedge into the classic I-thou relationship between physician and patient.
The history of ethics can be characterized as a conflict between those who see the ultimate bete noire as death and those who define it as suffering. If the Grim Reaper is the greatest evil, one might oppose abortion, war, capital punishment, and even the right to die. To paraphrase Dylan Thomas, one should "rage, rage, against the dying of the life." But if suffering is the cardinal evil, one should join the Hemlock Society because "quality of life" is more important than life itself.
I myself feel that medicine ought not be defined wholly as a fight against death but rather as a struggle against "untimely death." Sensitive physicians should heed the truism: "Thou shalt not kill, but needest not strive officiously to keep alive." The progressive deterioration of a terminal patient is not humiliating in and of itself, for some leave a tremendous personal
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