Seeking an Easeful Death: Permutations Within a Penumbra

Abstract

This Monograph derives from a paper given at The Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, March 6, 2012. Contemporary society needs recognition of a fundamental right to compassionate care at the end-stage of life. In a very real way, a right to this quality of care should embrace and incorporate a collateral duty to prevent suffering. Indeed, the duty to relieve pain has long been acknowledged as the least disputed and most universal of the moral obligations of the physician. The human right to care should be acknowledged as a right grounded in a liberty interest which cannot be challenged unduly or restricted unreasonably by a state interest in judging the “morality” of autonomous actions designed only to give purpose and to promote the basic interest to die with dignity and relative ease. Accordingly, physician assistance for the terminally ill, is a futile medical condition, should be allowed for competent patients giving their informed consent. For the incompetent patient, allowance should be given by the state to physicians who determine — based upon a patient’s life value system and a medical prognosis of futility — that a standard of common sense, humaneness, and compassion dictates legal and immunity from criminal prosecution be allowed for physician assisted death.