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The case against legalising euthanasia and assisted suicide

‘For two millennia the Hippocratic tradition has stood for the “sanctity” of human life.

We can alleviate the unbearable in life better than ever before. We can do that and not eliminate life itself … medicine cannot be both our healer and our killer’ (C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States).

Courts in the English-speaking world have recently witnessed a number of high-profile and distressing cases where individuals have argued either for the ‘right to die’ or for the ‘right to live’ in the event of incapacitation.

But it was perhaps the troubling case of a young American woman, Terri Schiavo, that split the conscience of a nation – causing a public debate which cut deep into the American psyche and exposed the core ethical arguments as never before.

At the heart of the debate was not only the ‘human right’ to life but the ‘right’ for society in general to be complicit in grant