Life and death

K. Venkatesh’s poignant attempt to serve others in death raises profound moral questions no society will find easy to answer. The Andhra High Court rejected a petition by his mother asking that her son be allowed to die before incurable muscular dystrophy rendered his organs unfit for donation. There were two questions at stake: one, whether there are circumstances in which the state should legally permit voluntary euthanasia. Two, whether Venkatesh’s grounds for seeking to terminate his life should be valid in any permissible scheme for allowing voluntary euthanasia. The answer to the first question should be a qualified yes, the answer to the second, no.

This morally sensitive question is not amenable to resolution within the inflated rhetoric of rights. The ‘right’ to die is not a right in the sense that its unilateral exercise can be freely permitted. Society has a stake in an individual’s death by virtue of its consequences. It also has an interest in affirming the value of life. But this does not entail that there are no circumstances where prolonging life is not simply an affront to the value of life itself. For instance, a patient suffering from a terminal illness, with little possibility of cure, and who is in impossible physical and mental agony, ought to have the option of a dignified exit. There are two practical difficulties though. The first is ascertaining whether a patient has indeed reached such a stage where the affront to the dignity of life far surpasses the value of life. The second is ascertaining whether the patient did, or would have, given free consent to hastening his death. The line between a free decision and one taken under pressure is very thin. More than abstract arguments, these practical difficulties have prevented most societies, with the exception of Holland and Belgium and a small number of states in the US, from legalising euthanasia.

Venkatesh’s desire to serve others through donating his organs was exemplary and it is sad that he died without having achieved this aim in its totality. But there were just no adequate legal and moral grounds to terminate his life. The Transplantation of Human Organs Act prohibits the harvesting of organs before a patient is brain dead. And the value of life cannot be made subordinate to the desire of an individual to serve others. Still, his spirited campaign at a point when he was so close to death has a truly inspiring quality about it.