Can people be allowed the right to die? If respect for patient autonomy is the supreme principle of medical ethics, why can’t we be permitted to end our own lives when the time comes? If those who attempt suicide are not punished under the law, but we are only given a watered-down right to die, what kind of a right is that, and how can we call ourselves a free nation?
Utilitarianism, as expounded by 19th-century philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stewart Mill, calls on people to act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. This school of thought has plenty of adherents in Taiwan, including Yaung. But what exactly is the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people in relation to the right to die? For a definition, perhaps we can look to Princeton University bioethics professor Peter Singer, who wrote: “During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological and demographic developments. By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hardcore, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct.”
An unwillingness to accept death is the ethical and cultural mainstream here. Taiwan does not have natural death acts like in the US, nor does it have an equivalent of the US’ Patient Self-Determination Act. It does not have legal euthanasia, like the Netherlands and Belgium, nor does it permit physician-assisted suicide, like Oregon and Washington state, or have legal provisions like those in the UK, where family members who help patients go to Switzerland to seek assistance in dying do not face prosecution.
Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore once wrote: “Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.” Taiwan has a long way to go before death can have its proper beauty, and the main reason is society has not pressed for legislation to uphold the right to die.
Chiang Sheng is an attending physician in obstetrics and gynecology at Mackay Memorial Hospital.
TRANSLATED BY JULIAN CLEGG
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