Skip to main content

Compassion or Crime?

Image
By
Lazer, who had reached a ripe old age and had become blind, bedridden and pitiful from constant pain from many age related ailments, had begun to weigh heavily on the hearts of the Mithals. Unable to see him in constant agony anymore, they decided to put him to sleep as a final act of compassion.
Vibhav, who is now taking up a job after completing law-school recalled how Lazer had entered their home and hearts as a tender one month old pup, when he was in class 2. Over 16 years, Lazer had played several roles from being the youngest child to Rashmi and Ambrishto a younger brother, playmate, friend and guard to Varun and Vibhav.
Laze had brought that special mirth and cheerfulness to their home: playfully teasing the children out of bed by pulling off their sheets, naughtily hiding their socks when they were readying for school, guarding their home all day, welcoming them back with incessant wagging of his tail, and playing ball with them in the evenings.
But as one year of a dog’s life is equivalent to seven of man, Lazer fast-tracked from a baby to youth to mid-life to senility in 16 years (equivalent to 112 of a man) with cataract, diabetes, weak heart and paralytic legs, as he lay immobile and groaning constantly in pain. After much deliberation, he was released from his painful state by euthanasia or mercy killing.
While most animal lovers would approve of mercy killing for suffering animals, extrapolating a similar approach to humans never fails to stir the hornet’s nest.
 Counter arguments usually begin with our arrogant positioning that Man is not an animal! While there certainly are differences, the similarities of the cycle of life and death are inescapably similar and humbling. Any person who has lived with and seen an elderly relative struck with an incurable progressive disease like cancer, wither and groan to the predictable painful end, will testify having wished an early respite for their loved ones.
Opposition to Euthanasia comes from both religious and legal quarters. The faithful argue that since man is incapable of creating life, how can he assume the right to snuff it out? Some go further to explain that the misery needs to be suffered through as it is ordained.
On the legal and technical front are 3 major concerns: how sure can we be that the situation is truly irretrievable? How sure can we be that this is what the suffering person, who is presently comatose, would have wanted done, and lastly, with sanctioning to (mercy) kill, what is the possibility for ingenuous humans to misuse it for selfish gains?
The Mithals heaved a sigh of relief on letting suffering Lazer go, preferring to keep the memories of his younger frolicking days in their hearts. And as we remain uncertain about how to deal with humans in similar situations, we keep doing what we are best at – procrastinate.
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 23 June, 2013.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

Questions from a Doctor’s Life

By
There is hardly any person in Uttar Pradesh who has not heard of Dr D K Chhabra, a senior neurosurgeon, who died recently. Over the decades his expertise, pragmatic advice and popularity had broken the shackles of his narrow surgical field coming to be known as a “brain-specialist”and a genuine adviser for all health problems. I got to know him in 1987 when I joined the upcoming Sanjay Gandhi PG Institute of Medical Sciences (SGPGI) in Lucknow as a young member of the faculty in Gastroenterology. He had moved from his alma mater the KG Medical College where he is still regarded as a legend. An omnipresent bachelor doctor living in the duty room readily available to help anybody anytime.He was tasked to heading and developing Neurosciences at SGPGI. He had an eye for detail and was tasked additionally by the director to set up not just his department, but the whole hospital, the building, equipment and the campus. DKC was a tall and handsome man who spoke little. But when he did inl...
1 comment
Read more