Humans deserve death with dignity

Last week­end, I was talk­ing with some friends about end-of-life mat­ters as it per­tains to pets. In oth­er words, that dif­fi­cult time in every pet owner’s life when hard deci­sions need to be made con­cern­ing when and if to euth­a­nize or “put down” their beloved companion.

We talked about how gut-wrench­ing that process can be, how it’s dif­fi­cult to make any deci­sion with­out some feel­ing of guilt or regret and how hav­ing car­ing and com­pas­sion­ate vet­eri­nary care can be so com­fort­ing and helpful.

At that point in the con­ver­sa­tion, I said some­thing like, “Isn’t it a damn shame that we humans are kind enough to allow our pets to die with dig­ni­ty and con­cern for their pain, while in most cas­es we don’t offer that same cour­tesy to ourselves?”

I wasn’t sure how my friends felt about the top­ic and shared my own thoughts with some trep­i­da­tion, but they all nod­ded and at least one of them whole­heart­ed­ly agreed with me. He shared very inti­mate details about his own mother’s death from can­cer, and how she suf­fered need­less­ly as doc­tors extend­ed her life—and her suffering—simply because it’s what they were trained to do: extend life at all costs and with­out regard to qual­i­ty of life. 

(It might be help­ful to note here that we do allow for with­hold­ing life-sus­tain­ing treat­ment such as ven­ti­la­tors and resus­ci­ta­tion at the request of the patient or fam­i­ly, which is not the same thing as euthanasia.)

In the case of pets, we as their care­tak­ers are allowed the choice—or the burden—of mak­ing the fate­ful deci­sion for them. In the case of humans, we could make that choice for our­selves—if it were wide­ly legal and avail­able.

Last year my good friend Chuck Witt wrote a sto­ry about death, and it’s worth a read. One of the things Chuck talked about was a scene from the dystopi­an 1973 movie Soylent Green. Granted, the world in which the film was set was a dis­mal one, a future where peo­ple were starv­ing and the only solu­tion was to cre­ate a food sub­stance made from the remains of dead humans, some­thing that appar­ent­ly was not known to most people.

(If you’ve watched Soylent Green, you no doubt remem­ber the famous cry from the char­ac­ter por­trayed by Charlton Heston after dis­cov­er­ing the truth: “Soylent Green is peo­ple!”)

Despite the hor­ri­fy­ing sce­nario of the movie, there was a very com­pas­sion­ate and touch­ing scene in which a man—played by Edward G. Robinson, the last movie scene the actor appeared in—who chose the time and place for his own demise and was admin­is­tered a drug and allowed to lie down and peace­ful­ly slip out of his exis­tence while watch­ing idyl­lic nature scenes and lis­ten­ing to beau­ti­ful music. I remem­ber watch­ing that movie as an ado­les­cent and think­ing at the time that, despite the nature of the film, the death scene of that char­ac­ter didn’t seem so bad. There were cer­tain­ly worse ways to die.

According to the advo­ca­cy group Death With Dignity, nine US states and the District of Columbia allow some form of med­ical aid in dying (MAID). In the rest of the US, includ­ing Kentucky and all bor­der­ing states, it is a crime for a med­ical pro­fes­sion­al (or, obvi­ous­ly, any­one else) to proac­tive­ly end the life of anoth­er per­son, with or with­out their consent.

Only two of those ten juris­dic­tions, Oregon and Vermont, offer MAID care to res­i­dents of oth­er states. One must trav­el to those places for the entire process from con­sent to self-admin­is­tra­tion of the drugs. 

On February 7, Lexington Democratic State Rep. Adrielle Camuel and two of her col­leagues intro­duced HB 408 which would make MAID legal in Kentucky. It went nowhere in the GOP-dom­i­nat­ed House. But at least some folks are try­ing. By the way, Adrielle is a friend and for­mer col­league of mine and she’s a won­der­ful, com­pas­sion­ate, and car­ing per­son. It did­n’t sur­prise me in the least that she co-spon­sored this bill. 

I believe that ter­mi­nal­ly ill indi­vid­u­als and peo­ple with incur­able, intol­er­a­ble chron­ic pain should have options as they under­go their end-of-life care process—and that one of those options should be to choose to die on their own terms.

If I had a ter­mi­nal ill­ness and was near the end of my viable life, I’d like to have a par­ty with all my close friends and fam­i­ly while I still had the men­tal and phys­i­cal capac­i­ty to do so. Rather than a funer­al, it would be a cel­e­bra­tion of my life and my relationships—while I would still be around to enjoy it. A chance to rem­i­nisce and share a final good­bye before bow­ing out on my own terms. I can think of no bet­ter way to die.

If it’s good enough for Fido, it’s good enough for me.