In the Midst of Life

allergies in those days, and it was thought that milk was the best treatment for a duodenal ulcer, so she was put on a milk diet, which meant about six pints of milk a day. This caused an irritable bowel and constant diarrhoea, but still we persisted with milk and aspirin, not knowing that both were causing the violent reaction. At no time of the day or night was this poor lady without pain. She could not move because of the arthritis, and her inflamed gut allowed her no rest. She could barely sleep. We had to turn her hourly, sometimes more frequently, to clear the frothy faecal fluid and blood that poured from her. Moving her was agony for the arthritic-locked joints, but she never complained, nor even let out a moan of pain – yet we could see the suffering in her eyes.
    One day she said to me, ‘I used to think that I was doing God’s will in my religious vocation. I used to think that by teaching the girls, and instilling a love of classical learning, and the knowledge of Holy Scripture, that I was serving God. But now I know that I was wrong. God does not need my intellect, my learning, or my teaching. All that God requires of me is that I should lie here and suffer.’
    This lady had entered the hell of physical suffering and, in its depth, found spiritual peace.
    The prospect of state-sanctioned euthanasia sends a chill of despair down the spine of most medical people. Medicine is a vocation, not a job. It is a calling, comparatively rare, to care for and, if possible, to heal the sick. To promote death is contrary to the Hippocratic oath and inimical to the heart of medicine. Ifeuthanasia became law, medicine, as we understand it, would come to an end.
    The vast majority of people are simple, trusting souls who lead decent lives, go to work, raise their families, meet their friends, and, when they get sick, they go to their doctor in the hope that he or she will be able to make them better. If there was the smallest chink of suspicion, especially in the minds of the helpless or the chronically sick, that they could be ‘put down’, the trust would be destroyed. ‘Put down’ is emotive language, usually best avoided, but it is the language of ordinary people, it is the way most of us think and feel about these things.
    I am a Christian; with every breath of my body, every beat of my heart, I trust and love God. Christian teaching guides my thoughts and my life. But when it comes to euthanasia, I flounder in a sea of uncertainty. It is horrifying, and contrary to the ten commandments, to think of killing the weak and helpless. Yet I also believe in evolution, and it may be that the necessity to decide the time of death for ourselves and others is part of God’s purpose for the evolutionary development of mankind towards responsible maturity, to which we will have to adapt mentally, spiritually and emotionally. Yet still it shivers me, and I don’t know the answer.
    State-sanctioned euthanasia would open the floodgates for the entry of unimaginable wickedness. Not everyone is well motivated, not all families are loving, not all people wish their neighbours well. Doctors are not all wise and good, and it is quite possible to become addicted to killing, as the career of Dr Harold Shipman has shown us. The Devil is alive and well in the twenty-first century, and will no doubt exploit the opportunities for evil.
    Yet a paradigm shift in the evolution of man has occurred in the last seventy years, which has altered birth, life and death, totally and irreversibly. Scientists can now confidently say that human life could be extended to two hundred or three hundred years, and some even say a thousand! Having seen, in my own lifetime, the miracles (that is not too strong a word) that medicine can achieve in saving and extending lives, I do not doubt that this will bepossible. But given the difficulties this could imply - questions of quality of life, overpopulation, human and natural resources - a cut-off point will have to come somewhere. If it does not come from natural death, or individual decision to die, it will have to be imposed. This is euthanasia.
    The personal decision to die at the right time, and in the right way, is the ideal promoted by those who would legislate for voluntary euthanasia. But will it really end there? If medicated life can be extended, decade after decade, with no end in sight, surely someone will have to make the decision to end it?
    To ‘turn off the machine’ is the expression