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

Teaching and Learning – is there a trick?

By
One of the big mistakes that we as parents and teachers often make, and that could stifle the mental development of our children, is to treat them as just small adults! In fact, it is this attitude of grown-ups that could be leading our next generation to become stereotyped conformists rather than original thinkers and innovators. And if we intend to drive home health messages and inculcate healthy habits we need to tailor our efforts to their cognitive potential. That children indeed think and discover the world differently was first noticed by a Swiss scientist Jean Piaget in the early 20th century. He studied his own three children grow and was intrigued by how they behaved, played games and learnt at different ages. With further observations and experiments, he propounded the theory of ‘cognitive development’, placed great importance on the education of children and is hailed even today, 30 years after his death, as a pioneer of the constructive theory of knowing.  He...
1 comment
Read more

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

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