Margaret Cottle and Assisted Suicide’s Corruption of Palliative Care

Dr. Margaret Cottle: Canadian palliative care expert is speaking about how palliative care is being corrupted by assisted suicide/euthanasia advocacy. Dame Cecily Saunders “You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but to live until you die.”

Coined the term “total pain,” for experience of dying. Need to treat all areas of pain, social, physical, spiritual, social: That is why it requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Palliative Care and assisted suicide mutually exclusive.

Today, that view is being challenged. Three main positions in PC community: Some are moving to accept assisted suicide.
1. Patient life is inviolable. Assisted suicide contradicts the purpose of hospice and palliative care. This is the traditional approach.
2. Euthanasia is a legitimate response to suffering and low quality of life. Mostly theorists, not clinicians.
3. Obligation to respect patient autonomy. Again, mostly not clinicians.

Dignity being defined as a way to favor interpretation that would justify voluntary euthanasia. Some among the European intelligentsia want palliative care to include euthanasia as a “complimentary” service.

But Dame Cecily Saunders, aware of the challenge to her view of hospice taking place toward end of her life, stayed firm, stating in 2003: “I do not think any legalized ‘right to die’ can fail to become, for many vulnerable people, ‘a duty to die’ or at best the only option offered.”

Me: There is no question that a major target of the euthanasia movement, and subvert it from “Hospice” into “Hemlock.” To me this illustrates how the culture of death corrupts everything it touches.