An answer for a Dying With Dignity clinical advisor
Sean Murphy*
I just can’t understand why as learned as you are, you tenaciously use the verb KILL to refer to MAD. You cannot ignore that this verb requires a non-consenting victim. It makes of you a malicious pro-lifer who does not mind lying. MAD must be requested ! Camus wrote: «To misname things amount to adding to the world’s misery»…in La Pléiade, Oeuvres complètes p. 908.
This message was left for the Project Administrator by a member of the Clinicians’ Advisory Council of Dying With Dignity (DWD) Canada after he/she had downloaded several papers from the Administrator’s Academia web page.
The downloaded papers do not challenge the legalization of euthanasia and assisted suicide (EAS). The substantive morality of the procedures and their legalization is outside the scope of Project advocacy. The papers simply defend practitioners unwilling to be parties to killing their patients by providing or facilitating EAS services.
Unfortunately, the DWD Clinical Advisor was exasperated by the description of euthanasia and assisted suicide as “killing.” This, he/she exclaims, is a malicious lie that adds to the world’s misery.
Such a cri de cœur calls for a thoughtful discussion of the question it raises.
Does providing euthanasia and assisted suicide entail killing — or does it not? [Full text]