Is euthanasia an acceptable solution to old age?
At 75, Gill Pharaoh was healthy and enjoying life.
She had a loving partner, two adult children and a grandchild. She was not terminally ill.
But the former leading palliative care nurse decided to end her life in a Swiss suicide clinic anyway – because she couldn’t bear to grow old.
Ms Pharaoh, who spent years nursing elderly people, previously said “growing old is awful” and she would rather euthanasia to becoming “an old lady hobbling up the road with a trolley”, the Daily Mail reports.
She said her quality of life was deteriorating as she no longer cared for gardening or late dinner parties and suffered from tinnitus (ringing in the ears). The English woman said she was not prepared to go further downhill and did not want to be a burden on her children or the national health system.
“I do not think old age is fun. I have gone just over the hill now. It is not going to start getting better,” she said.
Ms Pharaoh told some of her family and friends about her plans to kill herself before travelling to Zurich, Switzerland – one of the few countries with liberal assisted suicide laws – in late July with her partner of 25 years, John Southall.
The night before her suicide, they wandered through the city and enjoyed a meal alongside the Rhine River, the Telegraph reports.
“The whole evening was very tranquil and enjoyable,” Mr Southall said.
“I think it is what we both wanted. Gill had been thinking about it for years and I had no intention of spoiling it by getting emotional and heavy.”
The next day, July 21, she made her final trip to an assisted suicide clinic in Basel.
“Day by day I am enjoying my life. I simply do not want to follow this natural deterioration through to the last stage when I may be requiring a lot of help,” she wrote in her final blog post, in which she campaigns for the UK government to rethink their stance on euthanasia.
“I feel my life is complete and I am ready to die.”
Similarly, Susan Potts – a healthy, fit, 89-year-old Australian woman – shocked the nation in 2012, when she took her own life after receiving advice from ‘Doctor Death’ Philip Nitshke.
The decision by both woman has caused huge debate around the world.
While many people support euthanasia in certain circumstances, a person electing to die when they are physically fit and healthy considerably blurs the lines.
Should someone have the right to deny themselves potentially years of quality life because they are done with living, when so many others would give anything to have just a few years more?
When so many are suffering from painful, debilitating and terminal illnesses without access to euthanasia, is it fair that other, healthy people are being assisted in dying to avoid growing old?
Ms Pharaoh said: “I want people to remember me as I am now – a bit worn around the edges and not quite at my peak, but still recognisably me!”
Is that enough justification?
For related stories, try these:
Euthanasia: should an individual have the right to die?
‘I have terminal cancer. And I hate it when you tell me to “live in the moment”.’
His wife died campaigning for voluntary euthanasia. Here’s their story.
Top Comments
Just a thought, but given the growing population of the planet, if people were able to take this way out then maybe it's a good thing IF they have genuinely had enough. Where that blurs lines though is whether it will ultimately be something older people are pressured into in order to reduce burden on society. It's all very well saying it's her right to decide but the impact of making it widely available does set a precedent that could be abused in the long term. Such a difficult area.
I think we as a society need to become more practical (and less fearful) about death - it is something that we all have to face, and I can understand that as a palliative care nurse she understood that a good death is the only thing that we can offer those at the end of life.
She sounds like she made an informed, considered decision, that her family were well aware of, which I think is the most important thing.
Until you have grown old, and all that is left for you IS the choice of how you would like to die, I don't think any of us can comment.
It was her life, and her death. She chose to do with it what she would.
As a society I think we are becoming far too legislated and the life-at-all-costs mentality (even when it is against the wishes of the one involved), is actually taking away our rights.
Doctors may have years of medical experience and training, and (I should well hope) they know what they are doing.
But one persons opinion (qualified or otherwise) should have no bearing on anothers' life. We should each have the choice to live and die as we choose - "healthy" or otherwise.