Greg Daly
Doctors must drive debates around assisted suicide, and should not allow politicians and lobby groups to dominate the discussions, a conference of doctors has heard.
Speaking at the fifth conference of the Irish Catholic Doctors Learning Network, Dr Chris Garrett said terms like “death with dignity” have been hijacked by advocates of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, presenting this as a “value neutral term” when it is nothing of the sort.
“With adequate palliative care, we have it in our ability to control suffering,” said the oncologist-turned-seminarian at the conference on Saturday in Dublin’s Emmaus Centre. “Our goal should not be suicide, but should be helping our palliative care services.”
Palliative care
Criticising how some advocates of assisted suicide misrepresent aspects of palliative care as forms of euthanasia, he said that while statistics show doctors in general as opposing the legalisation of assisted suicide, palliative care specialists tend to be especially opposed.
“The people with the technical experience at the coalface, who have walked with people – unfortunately they have the greatest amount of experience and knowledge,” he told The Irish Catholic, explaining that many people, especially young people, have limited knowledge and experience of palliative care and end-of-life matters.
“Many young people have not experienced death and dying, and in fact in our society we almost want to protect our young people from dying, not bringing them to funerals and so on in case it scars them,” he said.
“On fiscal matters we get the economists involved, we don’t ask general people what the Budget should be, and I think in this case we need the experts with the most knowledge of bioethics, which is complicated, and in palliative care, because they’re the ones who are actually dealing with it and have the greatest amount of knowledge,” he said, adding: “I wouldn’t want people to make a decision based on misinformation.”
Decisions
Acknowledging that there can be a frustration with expert opinion nowadays, Dr Garrett said: “I think if you want a quality opinion then probably the people who are most experienced will make the best decisions and give you the best information.”
Other speakers at the conference were psychiatrist Prof. Patricia Casey, commentator John Waters, and Cardinal Willem Eijk of Utrecht, who worked as a doctor before entering the priesthood.