Voluntary DyingVoluntary Dying
Officials who wish to control the mortem process called suicide. Traditionally, self-induced death has been considered a cowardly or insane attempt to interfere with the natural order. Those who wished to manage and direct their own dying were condemned by law and custom.
In a pagan or nature-attuned tribal culture, there is a common-sense genetic wisdom implied in this passive acceptance of one’s termination. The brain continually monitors the vital functions of the body, and as the body starts failing, terminal programs take over. The brain quietly shuts down the body and during the few minutes between body death and neurological death, the brain’s hundred billion neurons probably enjoy an astonishing “timeless” review of all and everything.
In the late 20th Century, however, mechanical medical science started “interfering” quite dramatically with the “natural” order. Tubes and machines are now used to keep patients “alive” long after the cessation of consciousness. A stroke victim who twenty years ago might have died in an hour can now be revived, only to spend years in machine-induced coma.
Most people are shocked and outraged by mechanical-medical methods that strip dignity and human consciousness from the terminal-coma patient. The American Medical Association has supported the right of the family to remove medical treatment from terminally ill comatose patients.
Then there is the problem of intractable pain suffered by patients terminally ill from “artificial” diseases caused by industrial pollution like cancer, which cause agonizing pain. The brain housed in the body of a person living in the industrial low-rent, tacky culture of the late 20th Century is not programmed to handle these new diseases. The brain is capable of producing endorphin pain-killers naturally. The brain is beautifully geared to slowly, gracefully turn out the lights for humans—as they do for other animals. Our sisters and brothers, the other pack animals like wolves and dogs and cats, for example, manage to die in dignity without screaming to veterinarians for sedation or priests for extreme unction.
But the factory-hospital environment, run efficiently by factory managers—doctors and nurses, is a very strange environment for any normal hundred-billion-neuron brain. Hospitalized patients whose brains are imprinted to perform as factory units when terminally ill and in great pain passionately beg to be put out of their hopeless misery.
Quality of Life
Quality of life is a measure the degree of well-being we feel. It is not something tangible like how much cash you have in the bank. There are two components to quality of life. Health, home, and money contribute to physical comfort whereas emotional well-being makes up the psychological component.
Quality of life is subjective to each individual. We can’t determine it from across the room—it’s internal to each individual. However, we can make generalizations. Obviously diet, shelter, safety, needs must be at least minimally met. Also vital relationships, opportunities for creativity, as well as freedoms and rights.
Evaluating your quality of life is the first step in death designing. If you are suffering from a painful condition with little hope of improvement, life can feel like a torture rather than a pleasure. Losing one’s mental faculties can reduce one to a child-like dependent state. The Quality of Life Inventory can help you to explore variables contributing to or detracting from your quality of life.
Quality of Life Inventory
Senility Score Board
I. Physical
Health
Mobility
Vitality
Physical Attractiveness
Dexterity
Physical Strength
II. Psychological
Mental Ability
Interpersonal Relationships
Self Confidence
Enthusiasm – Life Spirit
III. Social
Social Sophistication
Environment
Financial Security
Dying is the single most important thing you will do your entire life. My existence and work was guided by these basic principles: Maintain a sense of humour. Think for yourself. Question authority. Love and celebrate chaotics. Follow the Laws of Levities—lighten up. Do it with friends because increasing illumination and understanding is a team sport
Design Your Own Death
Fundamentalist religious groups and neo-feudal officials oppose any “pro-choice” initiative that allows individuals to manage their own lives. These groups also are actively opposed to “euthanasia.”
Improving health means increasing the quality of life not just avoiding death
—PATCH ADAMS
By the end of the 20th Century, a growing movement had developed in California to allow terminally ill patients to arrange for their own dying: Americans Against Human Suffering (Freedom of Choice for Physician Aid-in-Dying). In Holland, “euthanasia on request” is made available after a prudent, suitable period of review. Since 1992, Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian has repeatedly tested the law by helping his terminally ill patients exercise their right to choose the time and manner of their death.
Dr. Death
Jack Kevorkian was the greatest taboo smasher of all when he made control over one’s own death a national issue. Imagine the state forcing us to stay alive when we’re suffering intensely and have make a considered decision to move on. That’s torture! He took revolutionary action for the rights of the dying—those experiencing suffering as the result of the extended dying process—to choose our personal time and method of “passing on”.
Kevorkian “pushed the envelop” far beyond what the right to die societies in America were at the time working for—assistance in dying only for the advanced terminally ill. “Dr. Death” as the media dubbed him, helped people with painful terminal illnesses plus people with degenerative diseases.
Andy Rooney, the long-time purveyor of droll comment at the end of the television news show 60 Minutes interviewed Kevorkian in 1996, when there was this exchange….
Rooney: “I think the American public is puzzled by you. They don’t know whether you’re a medical philosopher or a nut. Which are you?
Kevorkian: “Probably both. You might say I’m a philosophic nut, or a nutty philosopher. It doesn’t matter. Words don’t mean anything. If you dig into anybody’s character you can find eccentricities you can characterize as nutty.”
Sentencing him to 10- 25 years in prison, Judge Jessica Cooper said, “This trial was not about the political and mortal correctness of euthanasia. It was about you, sir. It was about lawlessness. You had the audacity to go on national television, show the world what you did and dare the legal system to stop you. Well, sir, consider yourself stopped.”
—DEREK HUMPHRY
The Good Euthanasia Guide
Where, What and Who in Choices in Dying