(Editor’s note: The following is by Gary Wederspahn, FEN board member and author of Intercultural Services: A Worldwide Guide and Sourcebook and many articles on cross-cultural communications and relations. Gary served as Peace Corps director in Guatemala, Costa Rica and Ecuador. He has travelled in over 20 countries during a career focused on human and civil rights.)
Definition of “humane”: having or showing compassion or benevolence; inflicting the minimum of pain.
The Animal Welfare Act was signed into law in 1966. It is the only federal law in the United States that regulates the treatment of animals to prevent cruelty and inflicting or allowing suffering. All 50 states have animal protection laws. But only 10 states and the District of Columbia legally permit some suffering people at the end of their lives to die peacefully and painlessly with help from their physicians.
These laws, limited as they are, at least affirm that we human beings also deserve the humane treatment we are expected to give to our pets. If it is morally and legally wrong to cause a dog or cat to suffer needlessly, it seems irrational and ironic that we would consider it acceptable to allow our loved ones to be treated that way.
Episcopal Priest and Thanatologist John Abraham captures this absurdity in his book, How to Get the Death You Want.
The following excerpt is used with permission:
Treat Me Like a Dog
When I had to put my last golden retriever out of his misery, his death was peaceful and virtually instant. The veterinarian administered terminal sedation, and Kingdom died with my arms around him, with no pain: not so much as a whimper. It was very sad but it was an act of kindness and he was gone the way most of us might prefer!
Isaac Asimov, referring to the book Final Exit, put it this way: “No decent human being would allow an animal to suffer without putting it out of its misery. It is only to human beings that human beings are so cruel as to allow them to live on in pain, in hopelessness, in living death, without moving a muscle to help them.”
It is against such attitudes that this book fights.
A friend of mine called his longtime veterinarian to ask about hastening death. The veterinarian confided that he used to worry about the morality of euthanizing animals, and so he asked his Episcopal priest, “Is God okay with me taking life this way?” The priest told him that he was responsible for protecting life and that also meant protecting life from suffering. That, and 30 years of fervent thank-you notes from his patients’ families, eased his mind. And then the veterinarian watched his mother’s slow and painful death, and all he kept thinking was, “I would never let one of my patients suffer like this.”
I sometimes wear a large circular button that proclaims in bright red letters on a yellow background: “Let me die like a dog!” Do you think that Fido or Fluffy would ask for your help to die, if they could? And how much more important is it to allow that mercy to a human being who wants and requests help in dying?
Unfortunately, the compassion or benevolence in the concept of “humane” is withheld from people, even in states with Death with Dignity laws, because they do not meet the narrow requirements. These include patients whose dying process is prolonged beyond the arbitrary six-month limit and those suffering from debilitating diseases, such as ALS, who are not physically able to self-administer the terminal medications as the laws require.
Don’t these people also deserve to have a humane, peaceful death on their own terms? If Fido and Fluffy have that right, why don’t we have it?
As Katie Englehart put it in her new book, The Inevitable:
“Many people told me about sick pets who were euthanized by kindly veterinarians. Why, they asked, couldn’t they have the same opportunity? Here we are, in the country that spends more per capita on healthcare than any other in the world, and people were begging for a veterinary solution.”
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John Abraham has dedicated more than 45 years studying the mechanisms and mysteries of death, and shares his findings in this comprehensive and approachable guide to a “good death” or, more realistically, ‘”the least worst death.” How to get the Death You Want is available at Amazon, Goodreads, and Barnes & Noble.
For more information visit: http://www.choiceanddignity.org/.
I’m glad to see John’s book is getting some publicity. It is a wonderful book that everyone needs to read. We all are going to die, and if we have notice that it’s on the way, we should have the choice of doing it peacefully and painlessly.
Thanks Gary for your Monday morning wisdom. I always love the example of compassion we show our pets and our animals of all sorts, but sometimes don’t extend to our human brethren. And thanks for the John Abraham reference…there is always so much to read its hard to sift through it all. Your blog is short and sweet and appreciated.”