Chennai: While most of the medical fraternity has welcomed the ‘progressive’ verdict of the Supreme Court permitting ‘passive euthanasia’ to allow a terminally ill patient to ‘die with dignity’ by denying/withdrawing medical treatment, some doctors as well as social activists expressed fears that this permission could be misused by unscrupulous persons to eliminate an inconvenient adversary.
“This permission granted by the Supreme Court is a magnanimous gesture to grant dignity in death for those terminally ill and with no hope of recovery. But this must be exercised only in the rarest of rare cases-such as a mentally retarded person in hopeless comatose case--and all the checks and balances of medical expertise and human ethics must be followed. It would a difficult decision for the family to take and as much a difficult situation for the doctor concerned to carry it out”, said Dr Joy Varghese, well-known liver transplant surgeon at the Apollo Hospitals here.
“In a cinematic way of interpreting this situation, if someone very important in a financial matter is in a comatose state and it is dangerous to his unscrupulous rival-either in the family or in business-if this person regains senses and opens his mouth, this ‘die-with-dignity’ provision could come in handy provided he/she is able to get a doctor or hospital willing to collaborate”, said Dr Varghese.
Expressing apprehension how the new ‘freedom of choice and practice’would be exercised by the medical fraternity-considering that the doctors in India have not been exposed to it-another senior surgeon said, “there could be several questions among the members the distraught family and the hospital handling the case”.
