Mazumdar Sonali--THE RIGHT TO DIE--Liu Yifei

In today's class we discussed about human right. During the discussion, group one brought out a very interesting topic about: Do people have to right to commit suicide?

Generally speaking, suicide is an extreme action when one longer has the courage to live. I used to strongly opposite suicide and regard it as a coward action. However my mind changed after I saw a movie.

The movie < You Don’t Know Jack>, adapted from a true story of doctor Jack Kevorkian in the early nineties of America, tells us about a controversial doctor who claimed that hospitals and doctors should have the right to help patients end their lives after permission. Doctor Jack Kevorkian invented a Euthanasia machine that can let them die without pain through injection. At the same time he gave patients and their family relief, he also received media sensation, mass protests, law court and jail for murder.

“When a patient in agony dies, then a doctor’s true calling implies, one should do what is best, at the patient’s request, for humane, quick and painless demise.” This is one of Jack’s principles as a doctor. I still remember him struggling before helping his first patient, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease (the incapability of remembering things happened). When he was warned that his action may cause the media go all over his action. He said” she has the right, as a patient. It is her choice. What do we care about the media? Who cares what people think? It is what my patient’s feel” Jack did care about the right of the patients and he could understand the huge pain they were going through.

During his 8 years injection, he freed more than 150 patients from pain and endless waiting for death. The huge number may scare us. However, he turned down about 97% to 98% of patients that asked him for help. One of them was a young man whose dream was to become an Olympic skier. But he lost his leg in a car accident. He then doused himself with gasoline as a suicide attempt. Fortunately but cruelly, he was saved and left his whole body full of burned scares. Doctor Jack found the man clinically depressed and refused his request because he did take responsibility as a doctor at the same time he respected patients’ right.

I felt myself foolish after knowing Jack’s story. I haven’t gone through unbearable pain and of course had no clue about the feeling when waiting for death to come. But I guess the lost, when life has no meaning but leaves you with physical and mental suffering and burden to your family, is terrifying. To me, Jack Kevorkian was leading society into an age of new enlightenment. Sadly, he did not make his wish come true because of the public pressure of “only god can create and destroy life”. He also was sentenced for eight and a half years in prison because of his arrogance and lack in knowledge of law. After he was released, he was 79 years old and the United State Supreme Court refused to hear his case anymore.

Human is supposed to be given the right to end his own life when facing an extreme situation and when his action does not offer bad demonstration to other people. However this statement is not perfect because anything can have good and bad influence at the same time. Maybe this is still a problem that worth controversy.