Active life support and euthanasia....................................... Pre-script: The following is translated from Danish with support from online translator, so I apologize if there are too many jfctjcktlynmlæjmsx .
During this period of human history, we have had great success with active life support. We can get a newborn baby under 250 grams to survive. It's absolutely amazing that it can be done at all. By surgery, we can remove 80 % of a diseased liver and make a patient survive with the remaining 20 % of the healthy liver. We can connect patients with 100 % failing kidneys to a dialysis machine, and in that way we can get that group of patients to survive. With surgery, we can transplant lungs, heart and much more – all fantastic opportunities to exercise active life support. We can medicate patients for a pile of diseases and thereby prolong life – through the use of active life support – so that the individual life can continue longer than immediately planned.
Being able to exercise active life support has been a great joy for many people, and it has never really been up for debate, because if we can prolong a life, we naturally feel like doing that merciful deed. However, it has had the unintended side effect that the population worldwide has been soaring over the past few centuries – and especially in the last century.
Furthermore, the average life expectancy has increased dramatically – with a consequence of several age-related diseases, which we fortunately can also cure.... or at least hold in check so that the individual life can continue even longer by active life support. A continuation that has now in many cases begun to look like a sad and unworthy continuation. But we continue!
Has the time come when we have to consider whether we should consider how to properly introduce euthanasia in this active life support society?
I like to bring this issue up in social contexts, and my experience is that the vast majority want us to deal with the subject politically so that the dignified end of life can become an option.
The debate has been brought up a few times (certainly in Denmark), but each time it has been paused for some reason: It's a sensitive debate, and as a politician you can easily offend your stable core voters.
On the other hand, it is a very important issue for all of us: There is probably none of us who still have a certain kind of memory and an awareness of our own existence, who want a prolonged and undignified phasing out of life without memory and without awareness of our own existence – while we are cared for, medicated and towed around by people, whom has no future hope for us.
With this little letter, I would like to encourage that all of us in our everyday lives and in our social gatherings touch on the topic of euthanasia. That way we can get the slightly uncomfortable topic made a little less alienated. If we all think about and talk more about the subject, politicians are guaranteed to become so courageous in the foreseeable future that they dare to take a serious and responsible position on the subject in a political debate – without having to be afraid of the voters' alienated attitude towards the subject.
If we as a society are brave enough to play merciful gods with life and death in the rampant form of active life support that we provide, we should also be brave enough to play merciful gods with life and death via euthanasia. If we can help people who ask for help to live, we must also be able to help people who ask for help to die.
Let's fight for a society with active life support and euthanasia.
Thanks in advance
D-I-H
