Prof P Carstens
The College of Law, Biotechnology flagship hosted a successful seminar on the 27 September 2012, entitled “End of Life Decisions”. Thepurpose of the seminar was to raise a matter of Legal clarity in respect of the decisions that people are faced with towards the end-of-life, in South Africa.
The seminar specifically dealt with: the (1) appropriate management of pain and suffering and the rightful place of hospice care; (2) withholding and withdrawal of treatment (sometimes called “passive euthanasia” or the right to a natural death); (3) advance directives (the legal status of a living will and a durable healthcare power of attorney); and (4) assistance with dying (assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia),
Presenters at the seminar were amongst others:
- Prof SA Straus, Emeritus Professor Department of Criminal and Procedural Law, spoke about the introduction to End of Life Decision,
- Prof Willem Landman (Executive Director: Ethics SA and Department of Philosophy, US); presented the Freedoms, ethics and law: the Role of the Constitution in overcoming ethical stalemates;
- Prof Pieter Carstens (Public law, UP); Legal aspects relating to euthanasia and the moment of death in South African medical Law
- Prof Louise Jordaan (Department of Criminal and Procedural law, UNISA), are advance directives legally enforceable instructions in current South African Law and
- Prof Sean Davison (Head of the DNA Forensic Laboratory, UWC, Euthanasia and the right to die: defining our Humanity.
Adv LC Coetzee, Mrs L Pienaar and Prof L Jordaan
“The controversial legal and often emotional public debates with regard to the possible legalisation of euthanasia in South Africa.The debate has increasingly gained momentum over the last decade, since the advent of the Constitution. This is so because Chapter two affords theright to equality,dignity, life, freedom and security of the person, privacy and health care, this Human Rights sectionserves as a foundational cross-current to the debate, and have all been entrenched in the Bill of Rights.
Pivotal to the euthanasia debate is the content to be afforded to the right to life, in context of what is to be regarded as the quality of life, and to what extent patient autonomy and the right to self-determination may be influential to request a physician to end a life which is “not worth living” on account of a terminal illness. In this fiercely contested debate, ethical, moral and religious objections/dilemmas have been pitted against modern man’s desire to take control of his/her own destiny which could be effected/facilitated by modern medical science, and a less paternalistic and more sympathetic stance from the medical profession.
Prof Pieter Carstens stated that factors such as technological and therapeutic advances in clinical medicine have greatly enhanced the ability of physicians to treat patients and to prolong their lives. These advances have enabled physicians to sustain the bodily functions of dying patients without “curing” them, thus increasing the likelihood of a “lingering” death”.
In addition, modern man’s apparent ability for longevity in the face of debilitating and deadly disease such as Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s Disease, Multiple Sclerosis and HIV/AIDS, coupled with the ever-increasing world population, religious objections to birth control mechanisms, global warming, wide-spread famine, the possibility of nuclear war and modern man’s existentialist’s angst and nihilism, have all contributed to the euthanasia debate being catapulted back into the public and legal arena.
Prof Carstens further concluded by saying that the underlying values, spirit and purport of the applicable sections in the Constitution, seem to be supportive of the introduction of voluntary active euthanasia in South Africa. Such a dispensation should be strictly regulated and monitored to ensure the autonomy of competent terminally ill patients while guarding against any possible abuse of the system. In pursuance of section 39 of the Constitution, there is much to be gleaned from the Dutch and Oregon experiences.
Ultimately, euthanasia is a matter of patient autonomy and individual choice – this reality was already echoed as long ago as the 14th century by the first major dissenter among European writers, Michel de Montaigne, who wrote that:
“Death is a remedy against all evils: it is a most assured haven, never to be feared, and often to be sought. All comes to a period, whether man makes an end of himself, or whether he endures it. Whether he runs before his day, or whether he expects it. Whence so ever it come, it is ever his own, where ever the thread is broken, it is all there, it’s the end of the web. The voluntaries death is the fairest. Life depended on the will of others, death on ours”.
The seminar was insightful and very thought provoking and only left delegates with one difficult question.
If it is said that only two things in life are inevitable that’s “Death and Taxes”
Then why should it be that when a person should willingly choose to pay their taxes it is regarded as morale, admirable, responsible and honorable of the person, however should a person willingly choose to meet their inevitable deathsooner and for good reason, such is regarded as immoral, dishonorable and sinful?
