Right to choose death is vexed

Dementia victims should have the right to make plans, while they are able, for their lives to end, argues former chief scientist and Australian National University vice-chancellor Ian Chubb. He makes his case in a submission to an inquiry into the ACT Legislative Assembly’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill. In a concise and calm statement, he describes what his wife endured over the five years it took for dementia to destroy her – unsettling reading for those in the early stages of the disease and people who love them. “Nothing here is unique. But that does not make it less traumatic to see your wife of 51 years turn slowly from a dignified and thriving individual into one incapable of the simplest functions – not cognitive, not physical,” he writes. “She lost all dignity, all quality, in her final years.”

Her experience, Professor Chubb argues, makes the case for allowing end-of-life plans that include the option for a person to actively specify the circumstances of their end. Plans “should not be only about what carers are not allowed to do (resuscitate, feed, etc) but should also include what a patient wants them to do”. Which could be kill them, with the sanction of the state. The ACT’s “proposed framework for voluntary assisted dying” includes the option of “practitioner administration of an approved substance”. Confronting stuff in cases where the person to die made the decision some time before and there are now disputes among loved ones over the signer’s mental state when signing, or whether they have declined to the state they specified was the time to pass. It is even more complex in the context of another argument before the inquiry: that terminally ill minors should also have the right to voluntary assisted dying.

There is nothing good or glorious about a life endured in the cruelties of physical, mental agony without end and there can be relief not rage at the dying of the light, but addressing the circumstances when death occurs by another person’s hand, on the basis of instructions given in the past, would be very hard to do. Arguments about mission creep on euthanasia laws where the boundaries are continually expanded are valid. But this is an issue that will not go away. Rigorous safeguards must be in place to ensure it does not get out of hand.