On March 27, a Canadian couple married 73 years were holding hands when they passed away together, with the help of a medically-assisted death.
George and Shirley Brickenden, 95 and 94, could not imagine life without each other. Shirley had a severe case of rheumatoid arthritis and had been cleared for an assisted death, but George had not.
“Of course I wouldn’t go without him and they knew I wouldn’t. We had to wait and wait,” Shirley told the Globe and Mail “Then, miraculously, he started to go downhill,” she added.
The Canadian law for assisted death says that the patient must be suffering from an intolerable grievous irremediable condition and whose death is reasonably foreseeable. George became eligible for assisted death last January, about a year after his wife.
Medical ethicist Art Caplan says that assisted death for people without a terminal disease raises ethical questions.
“When someone says, 'I’m lonely or hyper-anxious or I am just too depressed,' is that the basis for giving someone aide in dying?” he said on "Boston Public Radio" Tuesday. “I don’t think so.”
Caplan says that he doesn’t believe that medical professionals should be helping people who are just upset and unhappy die. “You really got that slippery slope problem opening up,” he said.
Medical ethicist Art Caplan is head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center ad the co-host of the Everyday Ethics podcast. To hear the entire interview, click on the audio link above.
