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Opinion / Zou Hanru
The right to die remains a thorny issue
By Zou Hanru (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-10 07:12
A terminally ill patient should be given the right to die.
That's the message a Hong Kong man has been trying to get across to the
community and get through the corridors of power. His book on the same
topic was a central attraction at the Hong Kong Book Fair late last month.
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This man is not a human rights activist, nor a liberal politician
expounding his pro-choice philosophy. He is a quadriplegic patient in
Hong Kong who has asked former chief executive Tung Chee-hwa to grant him
the right to die of his own accord.
Tang Siu-pun, 38, was a very healthy and athletic young man until he
broke his spinal cord in a failed backward somersault during a gymnastic
rehearsal in 1991. Over the next 16 years, he spent most of his time
staring at the ceiling above his hospital bed.
Does a person like him deserve euthanasia? The law here says no.
Both on the mainland and in the special administrative region, suicide
and assisted suicide are prohibited by law. But in some countries, mercy
killing is allowed. The most controversial case is probably Terri
Schiavo, a resident of St Petersburg, Florida, who became a vegetable
after a heart attack.
Fifteen years later, her husband managed to persuade the court to unplug
her life-support.
The word "euthanasia" comes from two Greek words combined to mean "good
death". Yet, if it is really "good", why is it prohibited in so many
countries?
First of all, there is the moral problem. Most religions in the world
consider suicide anything but "good". Neither Christianity nor Islam
endorse it. A Buddhist monk could be expelled for praising the advantage
of death. For Christians, only god can take lives.
Euthanasia often involves actions by doctors. Although a growing number
of physicians have come to support the idea of allowing terminally ill
patients end their suffering, it is actually against their professional
ethics. How can a person who is supposed to save lives take lives instead?
That, however, leads to another question: is saving lives more important
than relieving suffering? And what is "life"? Do we consider it a "life"
when all one can do is lay in bed and stare at the ceiling, that is, if
one is still conscious?
Tang Siu-pun's appeal to Mr Tung in 2004 drew attention to his plight.
When public support began to mount, he became less depressed, but he
seems to persist with the idea of people having the right to die.
"When there is life, there is hope." That is what the world-renowned
theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, who is almost completely paralyzed
by Lou Gehrig's Disease, told Tang when the latter attended his lecture
during his visit to Hong Kong in June last year. That sounds inspiring.
Tang doesn't seem encouraged by Hawking's comments, however. During his
book fair talk last month, he asked, "How many Stephen Hawkings and
'Supermen' are there in the world?" (Superman was played in film by
Christopher Reeve, who became a quadriplegic after falling from his horse
and died three years ago.)
What he meant is, those two celebrities are but a rare breed. The
majority of patients suffer in silence. Some of them, like Terri Schiavo,
cannot even make their wish known, much less protect or fight for their
own rights.
Euthanasia is an extremely complex and thorny issue, one that concerns
morality, religion, philosophy and medical resources. When an unanimous
agreement is unlikely any time soon, Mr Tang will have to keep fighting
for what he believes his right to die.
E-mail: zouhr@chinadaily.com.hk
(China Daily 08/10/2007 page10)
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