The many ways a human being can die fall into four categories: natural causes, accident, suicide, and homicide. It would demand an Aristotelian effort to further exhaustively identify all the sub-categories under each. Natural causes? This is so general, while accurate, a label for its category that it defies further description and this is alright. The general is specific enough in any given instance; it has an innate meaning. It does not demand any further information although medical experts could provide it if called upon to do so.
The same applies to accident and suicide, although each raises the “How?” question in some form or other and this in turn can be specifically answered. Suicide’s “How?” also spills over into “Why?”
What about homicide? As a category it stands at the opposite pole from natural causes. Both the “How?” and “Why?” questions must be answered .
I mention this in the context of yesterday’s news that the Michael Jackson death has been found by the LA coroner to be a homicide.
Not all homicide is what the man in the street would call “murder.” In the Jackson case it is alleged that the attending physician, Conrad Murray, administered a lethal dose of the anesthetic drug, propofol, and moreover that when it became clear Jackson was in distress delayed calling 911 for 82 minutes. If I were to enter your house and do this to you it would certainly smack of murder. In this case the administering of this and other drugs to treat Jackson’s insomnia was a normal practice. It was a pattern of behavior. People were used to it and Jackson, it is claimed, “demanded” it. Nevertheless, the facts are such, apparently, to meet the LA coroner’s definition of homicide.
In this context let me mention the situation in the Netherlands. I have heard it said that in that country under its state run health care system doctors can administer lethal doses of drugs to “bring about the death,” of patients (i.e. to kill them, commit homicide) under certain circumstances. This is a combination of two Greek words; thanatos death and eu good. One of the circumstances in the Netherlands is, I understand, the patient’s request or “demand.”
Is it conceivable that Dr. Murray will be able to follow something of this line of thinking? Rather than a homicide could it be argued that the Jackson death was an “accidental euthanasia?”
The clarity of the four categories with which this post opened is an illusion. This, of course, is true in nearly every instance. When I read the “cause of death” on my late mother’s death certificate I felt the need within to ask further questions: but how did she get that? Why was it not treated? Truth be told, she just got old and ran out of life.
The illusory nature of our apparently clarity should be kept in mind when we confront the vexing and upsetting ethical issues; euthanasia, assisted suicide, abortion, the bizarre accident.
How? Why? These questions rarely can be answered to anyone’s satisfaction. Faith demands a life lived with this notion of inexplicability or at least of ineffability. Can we say any more than Job?
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. (Job 1:21)
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