Can you hasten his death, patient’s family asks doctor

BENGALURU: Hours after the Supreme Court allowed passive euthanasia on Friday, the family of a throat-and-neck cancer patient from Bengaluru approached his oncologist with a plea: “Can his death be hastened in the light of the apex court judgment?”
Doctors at HCG Cancer Hospital in Sampangiram Nagar, however, counselled the patient’s family members — including his children — that he was in an altered state of consciousness and not comatose.

“The judgment has to be interpreted very carefully. In the absence of a living will and when the person is not comatose but ‘terminally ill’, such requests from the patient’s family will have to be dealt with carefully by counselling them. The family has misunderstood passive euthanasia as active euthanasia. We can’t hasten his death and induce coma. The family is terribly disturbed,” said Dr U S Vishal Rao, head and neck oncologist at HCG who dealt with the case.

“Passive euthanasia should not be mistaken for hastening death. It only means that no active intervention is made to help a patient live when s/ he is in an irreversible comatose state,” Dr Rao explained. According to the doctor, there is a moral, scientific and legal angle to euthanasia, which has to be examined carefully in the wake of the verdict.

Passive euthanasia is the wrong term: Experts

Doctors in Bengaluru advocate extreme care while addressing issues raised by the Supreme Court ruling.

“It’s the right judgment but wrongly worded. There is nothing called passive euthanasia anywhere in the world. Ideally, the Supreme Court should have said it is allowing withdrawing and withholding of the life-support system, as per the Indian Council of Medical Research terminology document,” Dr Stanley Macadam, a palliative care specialist and former director of Bangalore Baptist Hospital, told TOI.

“We don’t work towards hastening death. It’s about withdrawing the life-support system to allow natural death. We don’t advocate passive euthanasia and the verdict has been wrongly worded. It can confuse patients,” concurred Dr Prabha Seshachar, senior consultant, department of palliative medicine, Kidwai Memorial Institute of Oncology.

Calling it a landmark verdict, Dr H Sudarshan Ballal, chairman, Manipal Hospitals, said, “Living will is what is being practised in the US for decades now. But it should be implemented appropriately as well as judiciously. We will discuss with our legal team how it should be taken forward in case a patient’s family makes a request.”