” “Euthanasia remains illegal

“Benevolent paternalism” that violates the right of a patient to refuse medical treatment: that’s how the judge of the Court of Appeal in London, Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, defined the attitude of the physicians treating Miss B, a 43-year-old tetraplegic woman, paralyzed from the neck downwards and dependent for her continued existence on a pulmonary ventilator. The physicians of the UK National Health Service, who are treating the woman, have, in the view of the judge, given precedence to the right to protect and improve the patient’s quality of life at the expense of his/her right to choose the medical treatment to which he/she wishes to be subjected. So, according to the ruling of the Appeal Court in London, they violated the patient’s right to reject medical assistance and treatment if he/she chooses. As explained by the archbishop of Cardiff, Peter Smith, president of the department for Christian responsibility and citizenship of the Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales, and the archbishop of Glasgow (Scotland), Mario Conti, the case should be distinguished from the wider-ranging debate on euthanasia, because the request of Miss B was not for assisted suicide but simply the interruption of a medical procedure that had become insupportable. English law has recognized since 1993 the patient’s right to refuse food and water and medical treatment and be allowed to die. “Interrupting medical treatment that is dangerous and disproportionate to the prospects for improvement may be legitimate – explains Archbishop Conti – in proportion as the patient does not want his own death but accepts the reality of his own condition”. This case – he stressed – is quite different from others in which basic medical treatment is suspended with the deliberate aim of causing or accelerating death: “Actions of this kind are morally illicit”. Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff agrees with this assessment: “The right of a patient to refuse medical treatment has long been recognized as legally and morally acceptable”, he points out. What has happened in the case of Miss B, in the view of both archbishops, “must not serve as a pretext for legalizing the practice of active euthanasia”. Miss B had signed a will in which she explained she did not wish to receive treatment in the event of her suffering from a life-threatening condition, an irreversible coma or a permanent mental handicap. Her case, therefore, is entirely different from that of Diane Pretty, the English woman who appealed to the European Court of Human Rights asking that her right to assisted suicide be recognized. Diane Pretty, who is totally paralyzed due a degenerative disease of the nervous system and depends on a ventilator for her survival, asks that her husband not be incriminated if he administers to her drugs that may help her to die. S.G.