Old age 'rational' suicide?

Is it rational for people in old age to commit suicide? Recent stories include a couple who went to Switzerland because they were old and he was going deaf, she'd been diagnosed with cancer, so they merely 'checked out'. Nan Maitland's choice to die at 84 was made because her life had 'more pain than pleasure'. She wasn't terminal, but did have arthritis.

In something reminiscent of Flaubert's Madame Bovary's "Just a little sleep and then, no more!', Nan wrote:

"By the time you read this, with the help of Fate and the good Swiss, I will have gone to sleep, never to wake. For some time, my life has consisted of more pain than pleasure and over the next months and years the pain will be more and the pleasure less. I have a great feeling of relief that I will have no further need to struggle through each day in dread of what further horrors may lie in wait. For many years, I have feared the long period of decline, sometimes called 'prolonged dwindling', that so many people unfortunately experience before they die.

Please be happy for me that I have been able to escape from this, for me, unbearable future. I have had a wonderful life, and the great good fortune to die at a time of my own choosing, and in the good company of two Fate colleagues.

With my death, on March 1, I feel I am fully accepting the concept of 'old age rational suicide' which I have been very pleased to promote, especially in the past 15 months. Being active in the right-to-die movement, both in the UK and globally, has been an enormously important part of my life in the last few years."

Ironically, Mrs maitland's choice does not find itself being approved of by many of the pro-euthanasia groups. One, Dignity, said:

"Dignity in Dying does not support a change in the law to allow non-terminally ill people the legal option to ask for help to end their life - we campaign for a change in the law to allow the choice of assisted dying for terminally ill, mentally competent adults only. No one should have to suffer against their wishes in the final days and weeks of their lives, and the law should seek to address this, as well as seeking to protect vulnerable people against abuse."


In an era of increasing medical progress, it is odd, churlish even, that some wish to decide on their sell by day on the grounds of personal convenience and comfort. What makes this a more worrying issue is that those who seek to 'play God' do so because they want to live on their terms, and now it seems, die on their own terms too! The ultimate two-fingered gesture and one that will require a rethink of Psalm 139:

"All the days numbered for me were decided for me, once you decided I should be!"

Life is no longer precious and no longer has either dignity, or worth, for so many people out there. We use financial indicators (i.e. it's cheaper to 'let help them die'), life value indicators (i.e. they have such a poor quality of life AKA 'they contribute nothing to society and cost us money' and happiness indicators (i.e. they'd be happier out of it (and so would we if they were).

We can sustain life, we can remove many of the inconveniences of illness and old age, and yet it seems, we want the final say - seems 'self' and selfishness make the irrational rational (for some at least.

Nah, don't think so - just proves that nothing was learnt while they were here!